Maintaining S corp in california

I recently registered a S corp in CA. At this time I do not have any transaction. Income is 0, hoever I have made some expenses with my Biz account for small items like computer, desk etc.

From what I understand, a S corp has to maintain Minutes and pay some salary, at least to myself, to maintain the S corp status. I don't expect earning anything from my Business atleast for another 6-8 months. At this time I'm (Only me) mainly working on a software product.

Any suggestion how can I do maintain all the minimal requirements to maintain the S corp status, with low/zero expenses ? :)

Also, I registered the Business in Feb-2012, but so far I haven't filed any tax such as IRS form 941 etc, will I be in trouble ?

Thank you!

You should seek a tax professional to help you with that. I'm a tax professional, so a disclaimer is required: nothing I write here was intended or written to be used, and it cannot be used by any taxpayer, for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on any taxpayer.

You only have to pay yourself a salary if you have net income from the business. This is because otherwise you wouldn't be paying SE taxes on the income, and IRS doesn't like that. If you don't end up with net income, you probably don't have to worry about paying yourself salary.

Form 941 relates to payroll, if you have never had any payroll, you don't need to file it. Once you have payroll, you have to file it, even if you don't have payroll in a particular quarter.

You need to file tax forms 1120S and CA form 100S at the end of your tax year (for the company), and transfer information from schedule K-1 to schedule E on your personal tax return. Remember, California has income tax on S-Corp.