Built by someone who actually needed it
Josh Green is a fractional COO/CFO who built WageProof after discovering how expensive and opaque existing reasonable compensation tools were.
The problem I kept running into
I built WageProof because I was going through the S-corp election for my own company and couldn't believe how bad the options were for figuring out reasonable compensation.
The market leader charges $499 for a report that outputs a single number and is opaque about how it gets there. The free calculators give you a number with no documentation you could hand to the IRS.
The IRS is increasing enforcement. $45 billion in new funding, AI-powered return screening, and S-corp owner salaries as an explicit enforcement priority. If you can't show where your number came from, you're exposed.
WageProof is the tool I wished existed: a self-serve reasonable compensation report that's transparent about its methodology, cites every data source, and costs a fraction of what the alternatives charge.
S-corp reasonable compensation in 2026: what you need to know →
What's available today
DIY research
Owners Google “reasonable compensation” and land on the 60/40 rule, which has zero basis in IRS guidance.
Free calculators
Give you a number with no documentation an IRS examiner would accept.
Professional reports
Expensive, often opaque about methodology, and hard to scale if you advise multiple clients.
I talked to CPAs who wanted a better option for their clients — a professional-quality report they could stand behind without the markup or the black-box methodology.
Background
I'm the founder of RightStart, a consulting firm that helps nonprofits and small businesses with financial modeling, governance, and executive compensation. I do interim COO and CFO work for organizations that need senior finance leadership without a full-time hire.
RightStart Consulting
Fractional COO and CFO work for nonprofits and small businesses. Financial modeling, governance, and executive compensation.
rightstart.co →Nonprofit Comp Benchmarking
A free tool covering 1.9 million IRS 990 filings. The project that taught me how to turn large government datasets into tools real people can use.
comp.rightstart.co →WageProof applies the same approach to a different problem: using Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data to generate IRS-defensible reasonable compensation reports for S-corp owners and the CPAs who advise them.
What makes WageProof different
Every number is verifiable.
We cite the exact SOC occupation code, data year, geographic area, and wage percentile for every data point. An IRS auditor can check every figure against the same public source.
Full methodology, not a black box.
No proprietary databases. No "methodology available upon request." The full methodology is documented in every report and explained on our methodology page.
A range, not a single number.
The IRS Job Aid explicitly says compensation "might best be viewed as a range." Our reports follow that guidance instead of pretending precision that doesn't exist.
Nine IRS factors, personalized.
We walk through the nine IRS factors from Fact Sheet FS-2008-25 with your specific answers, so the report reads as a narrative defense, not a bibliography.
Get in touch
Location
San Francisco, CA
Questions about the tool, methodology, or your specific situation? Just email. I read every message.
See what WageProof can do
Generate an IRS-defensible reasonable compensation report in about 15 minutes.
Get StartedReady to find your number?
Pick your tasks, rate your experience, and get a data-supported salary figure in about 15 minutes.
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