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Sunday, November 23, 2008

Forming a business structure for your Firm

Procedure

1. Fill out form from SOS website (I have a word formatted version if you are interested email me for a copy), remember you need to put the "P" in front of the LLC as you are a professional limited liability company. Additionally you can not use names like Legal, Professionals, Services, You may use your name or Law Offices those are safe bets. Example: Law office of Attorney A, PLLC; or A Law Firm, PLLC are fine. But A Legal Professionals is not ok.

2. Send it to the bar and pay about $150 to have them approve your name, they will give you a certificate that you need to give to SOS.

3. Send the certificate and llc papers to SOS with another $125.00 for their processing fee.

This should all take two weeks.

PLLC Vs. Sole Proprietorship

1. Same tax benefits get taxed once and not twice as you would if you were a corp

2. Sole Proprietorship --you can do nothing and that is what you would be classified.

3. PLLC affords you liability protection against lawsuits and malpractice. if you are sued all they can sue is the business and not attack your personal assets. By the way your malpractice insurance premium will be lower if you are PLLC vs. sole proprietorship, in fact some insurance companies wont insure you if are not an LLC or Corporation.

4. If you form the LLC you will need to get a tax ID from irs. Very easy to IRS website put in your approved LLC name and they will mail you one, otherwise you put your personal social on w-9 forms if you are sole proprietorship.

5. You will also have to have a privilege license whether you are sole proprietorship or an LLC you will need to go the NC Dept Revenue website and fill out a form and send in the $50 fee.

6. Although lending institutions generally look at the credit of the owner, particularly when its a start-up, banks are more willing to loan to LLC and Corps than to a sole proprietorship.

Hope this makes sense. Good luck!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thanks that was very helpful, I am going to use the PLLC for the reasons you laid out.

support the sole practitioner cause