Owners ask this more than any other question and almost never get a number back. Here is how one is actually built, and what it is built from.
Profit is an opinion about timing. What you can take out is decided by cash, by tax, and by what the business has already committed to. A profitable year with a tax bill due in April and a truck on order in June has less room in it than the profit figure suggests.
If the business is an S corporation, part of what you take has to come out as salary through payroll, and it has to be reasonable for the work you actually do. The rest can come out as a distribution, which does not carry payroll tax. Pushing the salary too low is the mistake that gets looked at, and setting it too high quietly costs money every payroll.
The figure is set once a year and is easiest to move in the autumn, while there are still payrolls left to run it through. There is a separate page on how that decision lands on the filed return.
Payroll itself is set up on a full service provider that you run, and it is not processed here. That matters for this question, because the provider's own calendar is what the salary figure has to fit inside.
It is shorter than owners expect. The sheet is on the screen, the operating floor is the first thing asked for, and the answer usually comes out as a monthly figure with a note about one month in the next quarter that is tighter than the rest. Nobody is talked out of taking money out. The point is knowing which week it is safe to take it in.
Owners come to this page for a rule of thumb and leave with something better, which is their own number and the week it is safe in. Most of them wanted permission and what they actually wanted was the sheet the permission comes from.
What gets handed over is the closed month and the October number, and the return is prepared at the same desk. The worksheet arrives on a screen you already open.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.