When I first started my company I half assed it. The LLC was quick and the EIN took two weeks. I accidentally signed a contract with my name instead of the company and elected to be a sole proprietorship. These are all the worst ways tax-wise to do this.

By Nov that year I decided to look into the tax implications and they were unpleasant so I wrote the IRS asking to be considered an S corp from the beginning of the year and they sent me a letter saying it was so. I ran payroll in Dec to catch up.

When doing taxes likewise I added a cover letter explaining the mistake about which entity was to receive the money and then assigned the income to the S corp on the return and worked everything through and corrected it in the right way.

The return took months to process and I had a mistake in the taxes that I was fined for a couple thousand which was reasonable but they accepted all these natural errors that I fixed up.

That sequence of encounters with the US government blew my mind. The much maligned IRS was eminently reasonable.

My interactions with the IRS have always been reasonable and pragmatic. If you make a mistake they try to be accommodating to help you fix it.

Every interaction Ive had with the IRS or California Franchise Tax Board has been very reasonable and efficient.

Maybe the Strike Commander future was a utopia and not dystopia?