Dividends, Distributions, and Dividend Distributions-What's the difference??

[Plarka]

I have an S-Corp and I'm the only employee and shareholder.  Turbotax Business asks "Enter total dividend distributions made to shareholders during tax year 2024 from your accumulated earnings and profits account."  The bold part is in bold in Turbotax.  What is that acccount? My reguar business account, or something I don't have?

 Is this asking me how much I gave myself after my salary?  I thought that was distributions.  

[RobertB4444]

Accumulated earnings and profits is prior year amounts.  It's asking if you withdrew a bunch of money from the company account for any reason.  In your case - since all of the profits are how you get paid - the answer is no.

@Plarka 

[Plarka]

I pay myself a salary.  I took all the rest of the money to pay off the mortgage. But is this different from the other question that asks for the amount of cash or property distributed to the shareholder and is called 'Distributions to Shareholder?'

[RobertB4444]

Yes, that is different.  Distributions to shareholder is the money that you paid to yourself from this year's income stream after you accounted for your salary.  That's all of the net profits in your case.

@Plarka