by: Richard A. Chapo
Business entities comes in so many types that business owners can easily get confused. Here?s a quick guide that will hopefully shed a little light on business entities for you.
Business Entities
"C" Corporation: A corporation whose shares are held by shareholders. The entity stands apart from the shareholders for legal and tax purposes. The shares of the corporation may be ?taken public? and traded on stock markets. Google is an example of a publicly traded ?C? corporation.
Foreign Corporation: A corporation doing business in a jurisdiction beyond where it was formed. Microsoft is a Washington corporation. When it does business in New York, it is considered a ?foreign corporation.?
General Partnership: A business effort involving two or more people, known as partners. Each partner is liable for all partnership debts and obligations regardless participation and contribution amounts. Put another way, a general partnership provides no protection against lawsuits.
Holding Company: Part of a double incorporation strategy. The sole purpose of a holding company is to own or control other companies. Said other companies typically are exposed to significant liability threats. For instance, many insurance companies use holding companies to suck off profits and limit lawsuit risks.
Joint Venture: A cooperative business effort between two or more parties. It is usually limited to a single business purpose and involves a sharing of responsibilities and revenues. For instance, a database programmer and web site designer might enter a joint venture to provide e-commerce solutions to businesses.
?LLC? - Limited Liability Company: A creation of state law in which one or more individuals form an entity providing the liability protection of a corporation, but the tax benefits of a partnership.
Limited Partnership: A partnership in which the business is managed by a general partner with limited partners supplying capital investment. The limited partners are prohibited from actively participating in the management of the partnership. In exchange, the limited partners liability is limited to the amount of their investment. In pursuing this business entity, the general partner is almost always a corporation.
Partnership by Estoppel: A partnership created by operation of law when two or more people pursue a business goal and hold themselves out to the public as such. This business entity is prevalent as it is the automatic designation for two people doing business who fail to take any steps to designate a business entity. In this entity, each partner is completely exposed to liability risks.
"S" Corporation: Similar to a ?C? corporation, this entity provides solid asset protection for shareholders from business liabilities and debts. The primary difference is the entity can be taxed as a pass through entity and is limited to 75 shareholders.
Sole Proprietorship: A business owned and controlled by one person. The designation provides no protection from business liabilities. It is taxed on the person?s personal tax returns on schedule ?C?.
Each of the above entities provides certain advantages to a business owner. If you consider the particulars of your efforts, you should be able to get an idea of which one is best for you.
About The Author
Richard A. Chapo is a San Diego business lawyer with http://www.sandiegobusinesslawfirm.com - providing legal services and legal advice to businesses in San Diego, California.
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How IRAs work
How IRAs work
by: John Mussi
Are you taking advantage of individual retirement account (IRA) opportunities? IRAs can be frustrating because of the different forms and reports, difficult or confusing IRA rules. Successful retirement planning usually means coordinating personal savings with benefits from an employer's retirement plan and social security. However, in the last 30 years, retirement planning has changed, putting more emphasis on personal saving through retirement plans at work and through IRAs.
IRA Owner Benefits
As additional incentives to save, IRAs provide current tax benefits, such as:
Tax-deductible contributions to eligible individuals of traditional IRAs (since 1975)
Nontaxable distributions from Roth IRAs (starting in 1998) are found to be a more attractive alternative by many individuals who are ineligible for traditional IRA deductions
Income tax deferral on IRA earnings enjoyed by both traditional...
How IRAs work
Tax help > How IRAs work
How Identity Theft Occurs
How Identity Theft Occurs
by: John Mussi
Identity theft occurs in a variety of ways for example; in the course of a busy day, you may write a cheque at the grocery shop, charge theatre tickets, rent a car, post your tax returns, change service providers for your cell phone, or apply for a credit card. Chances are you don't give these everyday transactions a second thought. But an identity thief does.
Identity theft is a serious crime. People whose identities have been stolen can spend months or years and thousands of dollars cleaning up the mess the thieves have made of a good name and credit record. In the meantime, victims of identity theft may lose job opportunities, be refused loans for housing or cars, and even get arrested for crimes they didn't commit.
Despite your best efforts to manage the flow of your personal information or to keep it to yourself, skilled identity thieves may use a variety of methods to gain access to your...
How Identity Theft Occurs
Tax help > How Identity Theft Occurs
Getting The Biggest Benefit From Tax Help
Getting The Biggest Benefit From Tax Help
by: Stephen Kreutzer
Taxes are a way of American life. They are own duty to pay and file. Many people go in search of someone to help them when tax time rolls around. Tax help seems to be in abundance from January 1st to April 15th. Unfortunately, some tax help is best avoided. Other times the tax help is something that many people have no idea how to find. Getting the biggest benefit from tax help depends why you need help in the first place and where you get that help.
Most people seek tax help because they simply can not figure out he complicated tax codes. Every year it seems something has changed and people fear doing something wrong on their taxes and ending up in trouble with the IRS. Many people look at tax help as a way to guarantee an accurate and correct tax return. They also believe they will be able to get more deductions and credits this way, which equals a larger tax return. Unfortunately...
Getting The Biggest Benefit From Tax Help
Tax help > Getting The Biggest Benefit From Tax Help
Getting The Biggest Benefit From Tax Help
Getting The Biggest Benefit From Tax Help
by: Stephen Kreutzer
Taxes are a way of American life. They are own duty to pay and file. Many people go in search of someone to help them when tax time rolls around. Tax help seems to be in abundance from January 1st to April 15th. Unfortunately, some tax help is best avoided. Other times the tax help is something that many people have no idea how to find. Getting the biggest benefit from tax help depends why you need help in the first place and where you get that help.
Most people seek tax help because they simply can not figure out he complicated tax codes. Every year it seems something has changed and people fear doing something wrong on their taxes and ending up in trouble with the IRS. Many people look at tax help as a way to guarantee an accurate and correct tax return. They also believe they will be able to get more deductions and credits this way, which equals a larger tax return. Unfortunately...
Getting The Biggest Benefit From Tax Help
Tax help > Getting The Biggest Benefit From Tax Help
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Be Nice to Your Payroll Department
by: May Bowden
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I have had experience of working in a payroll department, in fact, I WAS the payroll department so I am going to put forward a few ways that you can help your payroll department perform their job more efficiently and process all the money that you are due correctly. Yes, it is largely up to you I am afraid!
Your payroll department is only able to work with the information that you give it so it is important that you provide them with everything they need. I don?t mean handing in your expense forms the day after they...
Be Nice to Your Payroll Department
Tax help > Be Nice to Your Payroll Department
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A Publisher?s Rant ? Why I Hate Your Byline
by: Halstatt Pires
I?m a publisher for numerous sites. I HATE many of your articles. Here?s why I hate the byline of your article and what you can do about it.
Bylines
The byline of an article is your chance to pimp your site and yourself. I don?t really care what you write. There only time I would forgo using an article because of the byline would be if you?re one of those people that writes seven or eight lines of text. Please try to keep it to three lines or less.
Something To Consider
If you?re writing articles, you undoubtedly know it is a great way to build the link count for a site. Assume you put two links in the byline of an article. Assume further that 60 sites publish your article. You have effectively generated 120 links for your site, a number that would take forever if you were pursuing reciprocal link trades.
Article links are also valued highly by search engines...
A Publisher?s Rant ? Why I Hate Your Byline
Tax help > A Publisher?s Rant ? Why I Hate Your Byline
How Can People Find Your Site If They Don?t Know What To Search?
How Can People Find Your Site If They Don?t Know What To Search?
by: Wayne Liu
We all know it is difficult to promote commercial products, especially those commodity items. People selling commodity items are generally submitting their sites to search engines, such as Google and getting links from other sites to increase page ranks. But you will lose some potential customers who don?t know what or how to search.
When we look at how people are using Internet,...
How Can People Find Your Site If They Don?t Know What To Search?
Tax help > How Can People Find Your Site If They Don?t Know What To Search?
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A Monthly Guide for Picking Perfect Birthday Flowers
by: Natalie Aranda
Flowers are the preferred birthday gift of most individuals because they are beautiful, cheerful and natural. Different months of the year have corresponding flowers, much like birthstones. This monthly guide is a great way to surprise the birthday girl or boy with a beautiful bouquet of flowers especially for the month of their birth.
January is the snowdrop and carnation; February...
Tax help Business Entities ? A Quick Guide
Tax help > A Monthly Guide for Picking Perfect Birthday Flowers
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Guarding your Computer from Silent Spy Ware Bots
by: Mitch Johnson
Spyware records your internet usage allowing advertisers to target you with product ads they feel you would purchase based on the information gathered. It can also record personal information such as credit card info, and social security numbers, leading to identity theft.
While performing common, everyday tasks on the internet computer users are constantly in harms way of spyware. By authorizing...
Tax help
Tax help > Guarding your Computer from Silent Spy Ware Bots
A Computer And Internet Glossary
A Computer And Internet Glossary
by: James Calvin
When you use computers and the Internet in your business, it's all too easy to start feeling like you're drowning in a sea of nonsense. Computer-related things tend to have a language all their own, and while you don't need to know all of it, there are many confusing words and phrases that you're going to come across sooner or later. Here's a quick primer.
Bandwidth. Bandwidth is the amount of data that...
Tax help
Tax help > A Computer And Internet Glossary
Budget Conscious; What are the Benefits of Repowering a Utility Golf Cart with a Kohler Engine?
Budget Conscious; What are the Benefits of Repowering a Utility Golf Cart with a Kohler Engine?
by: Ben Anton
These days, maintaining a fleet of golf carts and utility vehicles is more likely to be a matter of topping up battery cells than checking spark plugs and mixing fuel and oil. The vast majority of golf carts sold in the past decade or so has been electric. Electric golf carts, goes the traditional wisdom, are cheaper to maintain, easier to manage and...
Tax help Budget Conscious; What are the Benefits of Repowering a Utility Golf Cart with a Kohler Engine?
Tax help > Budget Conscious; What are the Benefits of Repowering a Utility Golf Cart with a Kohler Engine?