Are your books QSBS-ready?

Section 1202 has hard tests: domestic C-corp at issuance, gross assets under $50M, active business in a non-excluded sector, and a five-year holding period. Each of those is provable from records you keep today, or it is not. The records that matter: the original stock-issuance documents (board consents, stock certificates or electronic records, capitalization-table snapshots), gross-asset balance sheets at every issuance date, evidence of the active-business test (revenue activity, payroll records), and the entity history (any conversions, reorganizations, or name changes). Most QSBS disputes happen because the company cannot reconstruct the gross-asset balance at issuance. We keep a QSBS workpaper that snapshots the relevant figures every time stock is issued, so the proof exists when it is needed. If you are a C-corp with under $50M in assets and you are issuing stock today, building this discipline into your monthly close costs almost nothing now and is worth real money later.