S Corp Basis: Preparing Form 7203 & Reconstructing S Corp Basis

If your practice prepares S corp K-1s, Form 7203 is no longer optional paperwork. It's a required attachment for most individual shareholders, and getting it wrong can mean missed loss deductions, IRS notices, or worse, missed exposure for your clients.

We'll cover how to calculate stock basis and loan basis from the ground up, the basis ordering rules that determine what's deductible and what carries forward, and how to properly report carryover S corp losses and other items limited by basis. We'll also tackle one of the trickiest parts of this work: reconstructing or correcting basis when prior records are incomplete, including the basis adjustments many practitioners overlooked related to COVID-era benefits like the Employee Retention Tax Credit and PPP loan forgiveness.

Whether you're preparing this form for the first time or cleaning up basis calculations that have never been properly tracked, you'll leave with a clear, repeatable process you can apply to your S corp clients right away.