Starting a "Legal Company", need help, STAT!

[Andy Kitkowski]

Hey all, for this project that my wife and I are engaging in, we need to register ourselves as a business ASAP (I think, details below).

Basically, we are looking to create an entity for one reason:

1) To be able to receive hand-written checks and cash them, that arrive made out to "XYZ Games".

That's it.
No staff. No wheeling and dealing. We just need to be able to do the above.

I was looking around at different options (LLC, etc), but in the end I'm looking for the Cheapest, Least Amount of Effort Needed (IOW, quarterly tax reports aren't really what I'm looking for) to do what I need to do. Which, again, is to receive money addressed to a company name and legally cash them.

So you folks that do have companies out there... what do you folks do?

-Andy

[Lxndr]

I'm a Sole Proprietorship.

I went down to the Secretary of State of Arizona, and registered the Tradename "Twisted Confessions."  Got my certificate, and now, whee, I can open up a business checking account under "Twisted Confessions."

I haven't done that yet, because business checking accounts suck, but, in theory, I can.  That's the least amount of effort I was able to find.

[quozl]

I'm a Sole Proprietorship.

Me too.  The rules are slightly different in each state but a sole proprietorship sounds like what you want.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Andy,

It sounds like you will be best served by Sole Proprietorship status. Check out Game company: why? for some brief discussion about the options.

Best,
Ron

[Matt Wilson]

Hey Andy:

You might want to check out whether the city you live in has any fees for operating a business.

Seattle, as it turns out, charges businesses $80 a year to be located within the city proper, and that's where my apartment is. In hindsight I could have gotten a PO box outside of town and saved some dough.

The sad irony is that I will probably have moved to Milwaukee before I make a sale.

[Andy Kitkowski]

Rock on- Thanks for the information and the quick replies, all.

Yeah, after hearing about LLC and SP, I'm Sole Proprietorship all the way. I even found some info (admittedly, from 7 years ago) on SP in my state.

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/fcs/business/soleprop.html

Right now, my needs are the "Lemonade Stand with the Sparkly Name on the Side, where I can receive checks."  SP is basically that in a nutshell.

Thanks again for everyone's help.

-Andy

[BPetroff93]

It depends on where you are but in most places you can just register a fictitious name, ie: XYZ games, as you and/or your wife.  Then you can cash checks writen to XYZ.  The business is not a separate legal entity.  The only type of busness that is a separate legal entity is a corporation.

[Dav]

Andy:

You don't need to incorporate.  Incorporation is a method of limiting liability and risk within an invested foundation.  You aren't assuming any inherent risk, are you?

You want a business account at your local bank.

What you need for this is usually letter head and standing agreement for proprietership.  This means you need a piece of mail with your company's name, a copy of some letterhead, and that's about it.

You can always incorporate later in some "official" sense, but operations as a business establish, prime facie, the foundation of a business.  Therefore, for the first year, incorporation is assumed as a matter of course.  Incorporation will usually run someone around $300 to get done.  Screw that, save the 300, perform some good business, let it make at least 300, then use that to incorporate, that way, you have no invested capital and may establish a business a totally separated from your own personal entity (it limits your liability even more).

Now, if you want to get janky:  set-up your company as a Delaware, Illinois, or similar company-friendly state.  Then, photocopy your driver's license, state id, or passport and send it, with a personal check for $10, to the Citizen Consulate of Belize.  Next, create a corporation with the identical name of the stateside corporation, and register it as an S-corp in the Republic of Belize.  

Have the Belizean corporation purchase at least an 80% stake in the US corporation.  

Have all income pass-through the Belize corporation as a matter of income verification or other bullshit reason.  Have the money sit in the Belize corporation in an account that is non-US (PayPal works).  At the end of every year, have the US corporation invest in the Belizean corporation ALL of its income as a structured loan over the course of twenty years.  Cite the loan as an infrastructure building benefit and potential bailout.

Now the income that was invested becomes an investment, thus, it is not taxed.  The movement from US to Belize has a tariff of less than 10%, and a Belizean corporation is not subject to seizure, auditing, or other distressful bits, due to Belize's very corporate-friendly laws.  

Further, the photocopy and $10 make you a citizen of Belize, so the US has no jurisdiction, as the company is wholly owned by a foreign entity.

Tricks of the trade.

Dav

[Andy Kitkowski]

...what happens if America goes to war with Belize? ;-)

[daMoose_Neo]

Mobs of angry citizens will appear outside your apartment/office corner chanting obscene things and throwing piles of poo demanding you go home. And then they will burn your product in a giant bonfire and dance about it all like pretty pretty ballarinas.

Okay, nm.
Michigan, all you really need is to stop down by the county court house and file a DBA (Doing Business As). Costs us about $12 to do a registry search to ensure we're the only ones (locally) with the desired name. State Sales Tax certificate costs $1 to register the DBA Company as able to collect state sales tax.
Incorrect on the liabillity/entity on corperations, unless you're lumping all of them together. LLC's are usually cheaper and provide the same seperation of Citizen and Business without all of the stock and some other issues. LLC is definetly favored for something like RPG publishing over actual incorperating ^_^ Least wise my opinion~

[RaconteurX]

Tricks of the trade.

Hot damn, Dav. Now that's what I call research!

[Dav]

Aww... this is the type of stuff I do for a living, so it's kind of cheating on my part.

Dav

[Andy Kitkowski]

Hey all- just an update for those that were playing the home game:

We just got our paperwork back, and are now a fully registered Sole Proprietorship in Wake County, NC.

The process took about a week. In a crunch, if you could take a day off of work, it could probably be done in a day:

First, I went to the website of the County Registrar of Deeds.  I looked up the name we were using to make sure nothing like it already existed.  Then I printed out a form, ran to the local Town Hall to have it notarized, and mailed it to the Country Registrar of Deeds with a registration check for $14.

Then, same day, I pushed the paperwork to operate a business within the confines of my town, which was done at the town office for a fee of $12.50.

Now we are officially a business!

-Andy

[Dav]

Congrats.  $26.50 ain't a big layout to become incorporated, I'm surprised NC is so low... lucky you.  Illinois is a bit more expensive, but then, what do you expect...

Seriously, though, congrats and all.

Dav