"Hello,

I have been working as an independent contractor for a year, I would like to open a S corporation now. Can I put me old expenses in my new S corporation since I have been working by myself for this company since January? is that legal? I make around 1700 a month with this job. It is December, It is too late to do this?

Thank you."

To what advantage? Deducting pre-incorporation expenses against post-incorporation income on the S-corp's return can be a little tricky; depends on the timing and nature of the expenditures, and compliance with certain rules written to govern the treatment of start-up and incorporation expenditures.

But again, why bother in this case? You'd likely come out better to just deduct the pre-incorporation expenses on your Schedule C against your pre-incorporation 1099 income, just as you've been doing all along. Because...

• Much simpler; see opening paragraph.

• You'll get maximum bang for the buck as deducting the expenses against independent contractor, Schedule C-type income will reduce both income and SE tax. If you deduct them inside your S-corp scenario, there's a potential of only getting an income tax benefit, but not an employment tax benefit. Whether this latter condition plays out or not depends on the particulars of the case, and how you structure your S-corp compensation, but if you leave those expenses on Schedule C there's nothing to consider---you'll simply get both the income tax and SE tax benefits without any complexities to navigate.

Unless you've got some compelling reason you didn't mention for laying those old expenses into the S-corp's return, I don't think you'd want to even if the circumstances are such that you actually could.