Visited IRS a few days ago. Lady says as a C Corp the Officers (Pres, VP, CFO/Tres) are employees per IRS regs (true, I can believe that) and MUST be paid BEFORE the C Corp (via Board of Directors) can issue any Dividends to the owners (stockholder(s))... especially if the Officers are the only owners? I say B S. What do you say?

The central point of this question is NOT should they be paid. The question is MUST they be paid? I have been reviewing all the statutes the IRS has pointed me to and can NOT find a single word where it says they MUST be paid.

So... What if the officers do no work (usually you are paid only if you work)? OR if one does all the work but DOES NOT (why can't an officer opt out?) want to be paid, and the others do nothing to get paid for except when asked or when the one who does some minor work dies or needs a backup just in case? OR what if the company's revenues are generated completely via automated processes and rarely, if ever, require a need to pay officers for any oversight or managerial services short of being contacts for simple questions like these? Do they have to be paid? And how do the investing stockholders (providers of start up funds) ever get any returns if all funds are paid to (or forced by the IRS to go to) officers that did nothing to actually "earn" them?

And how do you explain a Steve Jobs CEO for Apple, for example, who shows $0 as his salary?

Plus, how is a company that pays its Corp income tax and a person who pays taxes owed on dividend income "avoiding" or "evading" paying taxes owed in the first place... as the IRS would have you think?

Seems to me most folks have a hard time reading questions let alone answering them. Fact of the matter is one branch of government, Dept of Labor, excludes officers who are also 20%+ owners from normal wage laws. One would think the same would hold true for all branches of government in order to not cancel each other out. One would think. If one were to think.