The date incorporated on Form 2553 goes on Line B in Part I, and it is the exact day your state officially formed the entity, taken from your approved Articles of Incorporation, Certificate of Formation, or equivalent organizing document as recorded by the Secretary of State.1Internal Revenue Service. Form 2553 Election by a Small Business Corporation Not the day you signed the paperwork. Not the day you mailed it. Not the day you started taking customers. The day the state approved the filing.
What Line B Is Actually Asking
Line B wants one specific fact: when your business legally came into existence under state law. That’s the date stamped or recorded on your filed organizing document by your state’s Secretary of State or equivalent filing office.1Internal Revenue Service. Form 2553 Election by a Small Business Corporation
The distinction matters because business owners often remember the date they started the process, not the date the state completed it. If you submitted your Articles on September 20 and the state approved them on September 27, September 27 is your date incorporated. That’s what belongs on Line B.
How to Find Your Exact Date Incorporated
If you don’t have your stamped Articles of Incorporation in front of you, look the date up through your state’s business entity search. Most Secretaries of State run free online databases where you can pull up your entity by name and see the formation date on record.
Match that date to Line B precisely. The IRS uses your date incorporated to verify whether your S corporation election was filed on time, so any discrepancy with state records can slow the process or prompt the IRS to come back with questions. That is not the position you want to be in when a filing deadline is running.
Date Incorporated vs. Effective Date of Election
The two dates that trip people up on Form 2553 sit close together on the form and serve entirely different purposes. Line B is when the entity was legally formed. Line E is the Effective Date of Election, meaning when you want S corporation tax treatment to begin.1Internal Revenue Service. Form 2553 Election by a Small Business Corporation
For an existing calendar-year corporation electing S status starting next year, the Effective Date is January 1. For a brand-new corporation making the election for its first tax year, the Effective Date is the earliest of three events: the date the entity first had shareholders, first had assets, or first began doing business.2Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 2553
That earliest-of-three date is often the same as the date incorporated, but not always. A corporation formed on October 1 that doesn’t issue stock or acquire assets until October 15 has an Effective Date of October 15, even though its Line B date is October 1. Getting Line B right is about state records; getting Line E right is about what happened after the entity existed.
Why the Date on Line B Drives the Filing Deadline
The date incorporated isn’t just a bookkeeping entry. For a brand-new corporation, it’s the starting point the IRS uses to measure whether the election was timely.
Form 2553 must be filed either during the tax year before the one in which the election takes effect, or within the first 2 months and 15 days of the tax year the election is meant to cover.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1362 – Election; Revocation; Termination A brand-new entity has no preceding tax year, so its only option is the 2-months-and-15-days window running from the first day of its first tax year. The IRS instructions describe the math: the 2-month period starts on the day the tax year begins and ends at the close of the day before the same numbered day two months later, then you add 15 days.2Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 2553
Worked examples from the instructions: a corporation whose first tax year begins January 7 has until March 21. One incorporated November 1 has until January 15 of the following year. Because that entire clock is tied to when the entity legally existed, an inaccurate date on Line B can misrepresent whether you filed on time. Enter a date later than the state record and the IRS may treat your window differently than the state history supports; enter one earlier and you may show yourself as late when you weren’t.
Miss the window and the election won’t take effect for the tax year you wanted. The corporation defaults to C corporation taxation for the full year, which means tax at the corporate level and again on distributions to shareholders. The election can still be treated as made for the following tax year if it’s filed within the first 2 months and 15 days of that next year.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1362 – Election; Revocation; Termination
LLCs and the Date Incorporated Field
Line B applies to LLCs too, even though “incorporated” sounds corporation-specific. An LLC that meets S corporation eligibility rules can file Form 2553 directly, without first submitting Form 8832. When the LLC files a timely Form 2553, the IRS treats it as having automatically elected corporate classification, effective on the same date the S election begins.4Internal Revenue Service. Entities 3
For Line B, an LLC enters the formation date shown on its Certificate of Formation (or the equivalent document its state uses), just as a corporation would enter the date from its Articles of Incorporation. The label on the form refers to the concept of legal creation under state law, not to a specific entity type.
An LLC that files neither Form 2553 nor Form 8832 keeps its default IRS classification: a disregarded entity if it has one member, or a partnership if it has two or more.4Internal Revenue Service. Entities 3
What a Mismatch Between Line B and State Records Can Cost
When your Line B date doesn’t line up with your state’s official record, two things can happen. The IRS may send the form back for correction, and the clock on your election window keeps running while you fix it. If the correction pushes you past the 2-months-and-15-days deadline, you’ve moved from a routine filing into needing late election relief.
The routine fix is simple. Pull the stamped or recorded Articles, or confirm the date through the state’s business entity search, and enter that exact date. If the number on your form matches the number on the state’s record, Line B does its job quietly and the rest of the election turns on the other parts of the form.
A Note on State-Level Recognition
Filing Form 2553 handles the federal election only. Some states automatically honor the federal S election; others require a separate state filing or don’t recognize S status at all for state tax purposes. Check with your state’s department of revenue or franchise tax board before assuming that federal S status carries over. That check is separate from Line B, but it belongs on the same to-do list.