Actually, nothing. To bring a corporation into existence, you submit your Articles of Incorporation with the government agency responsible for processing that paperwork in your state. By submitting the Articles, or “Charter Documents”, and the act by the agency of approving same, you have formed a corporation. You can say “file” if you want.
There’s some paperwork . . . corporations tend to have more paperwork, which is why some people might immediately gravitate to LLCs, or nothing at all. And, yes, if you want to maintain your status as a corporation, and maintain your limited liability, don’t cut corners on the paperwork. It’s important.
If you have an existing business, then its assets and contracts should get transferred to your corporation. This can look like an assignment, or a bill of sale. There are tax considerations regarding contribution of the assets of your existing business. You may also need to notify third parties, such as vendors and landlords. A […]
The answer in most situations is going to be yes. One of the virtues of an LLC is its simplicity. Once you choose to form your business as a corporation (and then an S Corporation), or to have your LLC elect to be taxed as an S Corporation, costs for tax returns, payroll, corporate state […]
No. You may get background checked as a vendor, even if you put your business in a corporation. But incorporating does not require any background checking.
Also known as a DBA (doing business as), if your entity is using a name for its business that’s different from its entity name, then you are using a fictitious business name, and state law requires that you file a fictitious business name statement in the county you are operating out of that records the […]
Yes it does. And in California, applications for business licenses are handled at the city level. For example, here’s a link to the San Francisco business license registrations: https://sftreasurer.org/business/register-business
That would be nice, but this is the beginning of you needing to think about why you formed the corporation to begin with: to make it separate from the sins of the past. So, no, you will need a new bank account, with a new tax ID number. Sorry.
A share represents a shareholder’s ownership in a corporation. This can either be evidenced by a paper certificate or an entry in the corporation’s books.
Authorized shares are the number of shares your corporation is authorized to issue. You do not have to issue all of your authorized shares, and frequently it can be a mistake to do so. Authorized shares merely sit on the corporate books as shares available to issue. If you need to issue more shares than […]