It encourages paying more wages, but it’s still a 20% giveaway to the business owners for paying themselves. I know that my own effective tax rate went down a couple percent when QBI took effect. If the idea behind the requirement to pay reasonable wages is to get more SS/Medicare tax revenue, then QBI more than offsets any gains. Plus the business owner can tweak their own numbers to determine what’s the most advantageous mix of W-2 vs K-1 income. It’s another advantage not available to regular wage earners.

Yeah, in general the big tax advantages from a limited company mostly relate to the ability to be flexible with how you get your compensation, as there are a bunch of ways to minimise tax paid/get government support.

The millionaire farmer near us (in Ireland) got state support for sending all his kids to university because of this kind of flexibility, while my parents (wage earning suckers) didn't.