A solopreneur client emails asking whether they should elect S-corp status. You pull up the spreadsheet you built two tax seasons ago, plug in their numbers, and quote a savings estimate you can mostly stand behind. Then you send them to someone else for a reasonable compensation assessment to get a defensible salary number that might cost hundreds of dollars. By the time you're done, an hour has gone into a conversation that started as a five-minute question.
That's the exact friction Solo S-Corp Advisory Tools is built to remove. It's a new tab under Clients in Gusto Pro, and you don't even need a client added to start using it.
Two calculators, one job each
Tax Savings Calculator (TSC): a side-by-side comparison of S-corp versus LLC-or-sole-prop taxation, with clear before-and-after election framing. It starts from a blank slate—no pre-filled assumptions—and it's ported from the Solo landing-page calculator, with a correctness review built in.
Reasonable Salary Calculator (RSC): a cost-based salary estimate using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data, factoring in role, location, and time allocation.
We deliberately kept these as two distinct tools instead of one combined one. Each answers a different question, and each stands on its own.
The tax savings calculator: a five-minute gut check
The Tax Savings Calculator models the tax difference between staying a sole prop/LLC and electing S-corp status, using your client's expected revenue and expenses. It's a great opener because it answers the question most solopreneurs already have—will this save me money—without forcing a salary decision before one exists.
Pros can run this before a client is even added to Gusto Pro. It's a five-minute check on whether S-corp is worth exploring at all, no spreadsheet required.
The reasonable salary calculator: the one that backs up payroll
The Reasonable Salary Calculator estimates a cost-based reasonable salary using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) wage data, factoring in the client's role, location, time allocation, and expertise, so the Pro is guiding the process rather than personally vouching for the output.
Why this matters for your firm and clients
For solopreneurs, the S-corp question usually surfaces at the worst possible time: tax season, under time pressure, with real money on the line. Today, getting a real answer means a Pro's spreadsheet plus an expensive third-party tool. That's cost and friction that fall on the smallest businesses least equipped to absorb them.
Solo S-Corp Advisory Tools collapses that into one free, built-in flow, and it shares the liability that used to sit entirely with the Pro.
How the options stack up
Spreadsheet | Another Reasonable Compensation Tool | Gusto S-Corp Advisory Tools | |
|---|---|---|---|
Cost | Free (but manual) | A separate paid subscription | Free, built in |
Where it lives | Outside Gusto | Separate login | Inside Gusto Pro |
Methodology | Rule of thumb | Cost-based | Cost-based (BLS wage data) |
Liability | Falls on the Pro | Falls on the Pro | The client's own inputs and a disclosed methodology stand behind the number, instead of the Pro's judgment call alone |
Feeds into payroll | No | No | Yes, coming soon |
