Every small business, particularly home-based businesses should consider a corporate form of ownership to protect their personal assets

Whether you have a home-based business, a small business or the next, great business plan, you should seriously consider incorporating your business. You can do it yourself or hire an attorney to do it for you. It is much less of a bureaucratic headache than you may think. Incorporation can be accomplished within 24 hours and you can quickly reap the many advantages.

The advantages of incorporating your business include:

• protecting your personal assets and your home from liens and liabilities arising from the business operations;
• gain greater flexibility in raising cash and distributing ownership (as in sale of stock);
• gain potential tax advantages available to corporations.

Service oriented businesses do not have as much to gain as other businesses. However, if your business has markets products or has patents, trademarks or copyrights (such as software), the advantages of incorporating are far greater.

Where to incorporate: Once you’ve decided to incorporate, the first decision is where should you incorporate. If your business is located in Illinois and most of your business is located within Illinois, don’t even consider incorporating in another state such as Delaware or Nevada. Ignore the hype of setting up a corporation in these states. Although Delaware and Nevada make it cheap and easy to incorporate, all corporations must register in the states where they operate even if they are incorporated in another state. This means that you must pay for corporate registration here in Illinois as well as in the state of incorporation.

Protect Your Name: Check out the availability of your name with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in Washington. Just because the Secretary of State says your new name is available to use as a corporate name does not mean you have rights to that name. You should invest the time and money to fully investigate the availability of your name and then register your new name with the Trademark Office in Washington.

Complete the applications by filling in the blanks on the forms supplied by the Secretary of State and submit the application. You will then have to record the Articles of Incorporation when issued, apply for tax registrations, adopt bylaws and complete the corporate book.

All of these steps, and more, are required if you want to make insure treatment as a corporation and avoid personal liability. The process is relatively inexpensive and simple. However, before you try to do it yourself or hire a service to set up your new corporation, remember you must also take steps to apply for the tax registrations and set up the corporation books. This is the reason why many business owners turn to experienced and knowledgeable business lawyers to help them with this process.

Your time is best spent making your business profitable. Don’t waste your time in dealing with the setup of your new corporation. Turn to attorneys who will incorporate and setup everything for you. Also, you will be building a professional relationship with someone who will have a working knowledge about the structure of your business. Take advantage of years of business advice when you consult with experienced business lawyers.

For additional information and a free initial consultation, contact George Bellas.