You are looking at sample data. Nothing here is real and nothing you do is saved.
Start your free weekAbout ConthaHarbor & Pine
Changes reach the next payroll. Approved payrolls keep what they were worked out with.
Each of these is done once, with a government office, in the business’s own name. Tick them as you go.
Agree your salary with your accountant
The IRS expects a working S-corp owner to be paid a reasonable salary before taking distributions. What that is for you is your accountant’s call; Contha shows the factors, not a number.
Enroll the business in EFTPS
The IRS’s free system for federal payroll tax payments. Enroll with the EIN; the PIN arrives by post in about a week.
OpenRegister as a New York employer
NYS-100, through New York Business Express. It covers withholding and unemployment insurance and gives you a UI employer registration number (seven digits, eight with its check digit). Withholding uses your EIN.
OpenAdd your unemployment rate
From the rate notice the Department of Labor sends after you register. New employers in 2026 pay 4.025% plus the 0.075% Re-employment Service Fund on the first $17,600 of wages.
Disability and Paid Family Leave
Not required for a one or two person corporation whose officers own all the stock and hold all the offices, with no other workers. If you buy a policy anyway, turn on the deductions below.
OpenWorkers’ compensation
The same one or two person corporation exemption applies. A CE-200 certificate is the proof of it, if a licence or contract asks.
OpenFill in your W-4 and IT-2104
The two withholding forms, as you would give them to an employer: below, under Withholding.
Before tax. Each run starts from this and can be changed.
Monthly is the usual choice for one owner.
As you would fill in Form W-4 and Form IT-2104 for any employer, and the name and address your W-2 prints. Leave the extras blank if you have no other job. Your Social Security number is never asked for or stored; you write it on the forms yourself.
The simplest way to cover tax on distributions: withheld evenly, counted as paid on time.
The contribution rate on your DOL notice, without the 0.075% fund, which Contha adds.
What the 941, 940 and W-2 print for the business.
An S corporation pays each owner who works in it a salary, through payroll, like any employee. Each has their own W-4 and IT-2104, and their own year so far for social security, FUTA and New York unemployment. Every payroll pays everyone here on the same day.
Gusto takes each payroll from the business account, pays you, pays the IRS and New York, and files the returns. Contha keeps the books, shows every payroll, and checks each one against its own calculation.
Full service is not switched on for Contha yet. Self-filed payroll works in full meanwhile.