The certificate creates a company. It does not tell anyone how that company will be taxed.
Name the month
A formation filing is a state act. The state takes the certificate, the fee, and the name, and a company exists on that state's list. Owners often leave that appointment believing the tax question was answered in the same hour. It was not.
The federal government was not in that room. It learns about the activity later, when a number is requested, when a return shows up, or when a bank asks for paperwork the state filing never contained. Those are different clocks.
If there is one owner and nobody files an election, the activity is usually ignored as a separate taxpayer and lands on that owner's individual return. Schedules differ with the work, but the idea is the same. The company is real to the state and invisible as its own taxpayer.
If there are two or more owners and nobody files an election, the usual result is a partnership return, with a slip for each owner. The split people described at dinner is not the split on that slip unless someone wrote it down in the way the return requires.
An election to be taxed as an S corporation, or as a C corporation, is a later form. It has a deadline measured from the start of the tax year, and late relief exists in some cases. Formation day is not that deadline, and it is not that form.
Keep the stamped certificate, the name exactly as the state spelled it, and the date the company began. Those three facts are what the bank, the number application, and the first return all have to be able to repeat.
A binder that holds only a payment receipt is thin. The receipt proves a fee. The certificate proves a company. If the certificate is in a lawyer's portal and you have never opened the file, that is the first errand, before any talk of elections.
We read the certificate against the return you have, or against the fact that you have never filed one. Then we say which federal default appears to be in force, and whether an election is still a live choice for this year or only for the next one.
The books can start in the same month. A chart that matches how the company actually makes money, a bank account in the company's name, and a close that ties. Payroll is set up only if someone is being paid. Once those accounts exist, the service you already use is the one that issues the checks.
The month on the certificate is enough to start.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.