By Attorney Kelly Jesson
There are numerous to-do items and deadlines business owners must keep up with to successfully run a business. However, many business owners forget that they must file an Annual Report with the North Carolina Secretary of State to keep their business in active and good standing with the state. The Annual Report is used to keep the business records up to date with the Secretary of State. On the Annual Report, you will provide basic information about your business, such as the name and address of the registered agent, the principal address of the business, and the names and signatures of company officials. Most businesses formalized with the Secretary of State’s Office need to file an Annual Report, such as Business Corporations, Limited Liability Companies (LLC), Limited Liability Partnerships (LLP), and Limited Liability Limited Partnerships (LLLP). Non-Profits, Limited Partnerships, Professional Corporations (PCs), and Professional Limited Liability Companies (PLLC’s) do not have to file an Annual Report. There is also a filing fee due with the Annual Report. For LLC’s and partnerships, the fee is $200, and for corporations, the fee is $25. The due date for your business’s annual report depends upon the type of business, but generally April 15th is the deadline for most businesses. For corporations and partnerships (LLP and LLLP), the annual report is due to the Secretary of State’s Office the 15th day of the fourth month following the entity’s fiscal year’s end. For example, if your fiscal year ends on December 31, your annual report for that year is due on April 15th. Jesson & Rains offers a yearly plan for businesses that includes serving as our client’s registered agent and filing their annual report, among other things. This plan helps to ensure your privacy (if your business is ever sued, the lawsuit will be delivered to our office’s address); you will be less likely to fall victim to a scam (we will sort through and destroy junk mail); you will be more organized and have less paper (we will scan and forward your mail immediately to your attention after sorting); and we will ensure that corporate records and Secretary of State records are kept up to date. We also offer an upgraded yearly plan that includes unlimited telephone access to attorneys throughout the year. The consequence for not filing an Annual Report and/or paying the fee is that the Secretary of State can administratively dissolve your business. This means that you will lose the liability protection you enjoy by being a formal business, and a creditor can come after your personal assets. If you have questions about filing your Annual Report or want to learn more about the annual plan services offered by our firm, you can click HERE, or feel free to reach out to Jesson & Rains directly!
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By Attorney Kelly Jesson
One of the main reasons why business owners formalize their businesses by forming an LLC or a corporation is so that their personal assets and liabilities can be separated from their business assets and liabilities. If the business is sued, the owner’s personal assets will be protected, and vice versa. However, in certain circumstances, a court may disregard the corporate entity and hold its owners personally liable for business debts if the corporate entity, at the time, had no separate mind, will, or existence of its own. In making this determination, a court will consider, among other factors, whether a business has complied with “corporate formalities.” Corporate formalities include issuing and following bylaws, issuing shares, electing a board of directors, holding annual meetings of the board and shareholders, sending proper notice of these meetings, and keeping minutes and other corporate records. Owners should not intermingle business and personal assets or employees. Owners should not deal with third parties in such a way that the third party does not know they are doing business with an LLC or a corporation. Some closely-held corporations may enter into a shareholder agreement in lieu of some of the above requirements. With an LLC, some of these corporate formalities do not have to be observed, since LLCs are subject to fewer formal statutory requirements than are corporations. If the owner of a business complies with corporate formalities and consistently lists the business’s name on contracts and other documents, third parties will be considered to have voluntarily dealt with the business, and a court will be less inclined to hold the individual owner personally liable for the business’s debts. However, if corporate formalities are being ignored, even inadvertently, that could lead to a court ignoring the existence of the LLC or corporation, which may result in the business owner’s personal assets being at risk. If you or someone you know needs assistance bringing a business in line with its required formalities, please give Jesson & Rains a call! We offer flat fee packages for these formation documents. We also offer flat fee annual plans that include preparing annual meeting notices and minutes, filing annual reports with the Secretary of State’s office, and other legal services. More information can be found here. We work with our clients to reduce the likelihood that they will ever be responsible for business liabilities. By Attorney Kelly Jesson Jesson & Rains, PLLC, is offering a couple of new business plan packages that include discounted legal services. Our clients are busy and they sometimes forget to keep their information updated with the Secretary of State’s Office or file their annual reports; they pay for a registered agent who does nothing more than forward their mail; and they sometimes fall victim to scams like this and this.
We’re offering a yearly plan that includes serving as our client’s registered agent and filing their annual report, among other things. A description of the plan is attached to this email. This plan helps to ensure your privacy (if your business is ever sued, the lawsuit will be delivered to our office’s address); you will be less likely to fall victim to a scam (we will sort through and destroy junk mail); you will be more organized and have less paper (we will scan and forward your mail immediately to your attention after sorting); and we will ensure that corporate records and Secretary of State records are kept up to date. We’re also offering an upgraded yearly plan that includes unlimited access to attorneys throughout the year. No more billing for .1 emails or .2 telephone calls. We want to encourage people to contact us anytime they need us instead of being afraid to get a bill from us. This is a continued effort from us to offer flat fees instead of hourly billing. Annual reports are due April 15, and they can be filed now, so this is a great time to switch over to having Jesson & Rains handle it. Please contact us if you’re interested, and please forward to any busy business owners you think may need our help! By Attorney Edward Jesson
Whether good or bad, it is sometimes necessary to dissolve a corporation or limited liability company (“LLC”). If the business has no assets or liabilities, then closing down is relatively simple. However, business owners can get into trouble when they attempt to close down their businesses if it has remaining assets and liabilities. It is recommended that they work with an attorney. There are some subtle differences between dissolving an LLC and a corporation, but we are just going to use a corporation as an example below. The first step in voluntarily closing a business in North Carolina is to file the articles of dissolution with the Secretary of State. Once the articles of dissolution are filed, the corporation still must adhere to its bylaws with regards to its directors and shareholders. However, the corporation is no longer allowed to carry on its normal business and must only do things in furtherance of winding up its affairs and liquidating. The North Carolina Business Corporation Act specifically states that a business may:
The next step in the process is liquidation. During this process, the owners of the business are responsible for selling assets and for settling the corporation’s debts. In the North Carolina Business Corporations Act, there are notice and publication procedures that a corporation can use to give notice of its dissolution or liquidation to creditors or potential creditors. While the Act does not impose any legal requirement to do so, it is beneficial for businesses to follow this procedure because it starts a clock and establishes deadlines within which creditors must bring claims. The potential claims against a corporation fall into two main camps: known claims and unknown claims. If a corporation sends written notice of its dissolution to known creditors, it can establish a claims due date of 120 days from the date of the notice. If the claim is not made by that deadline, the claim will be considered time barred. For unknown claims, a corporation must publish, among other things, notice of its dissolution in a newspaper in the county where the dissolved corporation has its principal office. This will start a five-year clock for unknown claims. Generally, when liquidating a corporation, all assets of the corporation will be distributed to any creditors first and then to the shareholders. If the assets are not properly distributed (e.g. if a shareholder received assets instead of a creditor), then the aggrieved creditor could potentially file a lawsuit against the shareholder and against the directors who authorized the distribution. As you can see, closing down a business can be a minefield for all involved. The attorneys at Jesson & Rains can help you close down your corporation or LLC properly or help you figure out alternatives to closing down your business. By Attorney Kelly Rains Jesson and Associate Attorney Danielle Nodar
Forming a corporation in the state of North Carolina is pretty easy to do yourself, but that may get business owners into trouble. Numerous corporations exist without any bylaws and without issuing any shares (especially those who do-it-themselves). Failing to complete all the steps can have negative consequences. A corporation is owned by its shareholders. Shortly after a business is incorporated, it should issue shares to the owner(s). If there are no shares issued, there are no shareholders, and thus no owners. Why do so many business owners fail to complete this step? Probably for two reasons: (1) they don’t know this is the way it works and (2) in order to incorporate, all the Secretary of State’s office requires is that Articles of Incorporation be filed with its office. It does not require proof of bylaws or shares. Shareholders do not manage the business just because they are shareholders. The Board of Directors manages the business. For small, family businesses, the shareholders and the directors are often the same people. However, these are still two distinct roles. Most business owners that have not issued themselves shares are simply acting like directors of the corporation. To incorporate, the incorporator (could be a future director, shareholder, or third party, like an attorney) files Articles of Incorporation. North Carolina law states that if no directors are named in the Articles of Incorporation, the incorporator shall hold a “meeting” (can be informal) to name the initial directors. “The incorporators or board of directors of a corporation shall adopt initial bylaws for the corporation.” N.C.G.S. § 55-2-06 (emphasis added). The law states that there SHALL be bylaws, not that there MAY be bylaws. The bylaws govern the management and affairs of the corporation. The bylaws state how shares will be issued, how directors will be named/replaced, and how the company is managed. So why should you care? First, the liability protection corporation owners enjoy is at risk if you do not follow the corporate formalities required by North Carolina law. You risk having a creditor ask a court to “pierce the corporate veil,” making you personally liable for debts and judgments of the corporation. When a court “pierces the corporate veil,” it determines that the corporation and owner are basically the same, with the corporation serving as merely a shell for the owner to act. If this finding occurs, your personal assets can be used to satisfy corporate debts, which defeats one of main purposes of owning a corporation in the first place. Second, you will probably not be able to obtain an SBA loan if you do not have bylaws. These loans are backed by government guarantees. The government wants to make sure it is not lending to an entity that has not been set up properly. The SBA wants to make sure the bylaws do not contain provisions that make the loan risky. Finally, another reason why we talk to our clients about shares and bylaws is for estate planning purposes. When a person passes away, they leave their property to beneficiaries. Shares of corporations are personal property. If a business owner has not issued himself or herself shares of the corporation, what is there to pass to their beneficiaries? Further, as we explained above, corporations are managed by the board of directors and not the shareholders. Therefore, even if a shareholder owner passes their shares to their beneficiaries, that does not mean that the beneficiary now suddenly starts managing the company as a new director. If you are the sole director of your corporation, who will take over management when you pass away or are sick? The bylaws of a corporation will govern what happens when a director passes away or otherwise becomes unable to act. We can do some pretty creative estate planning with owners of corporations. We can help them restrict management or ownership of shares to family members. We can ensure that their shares stay out of probate through using trusts, saving their families money. For assistance with drafting bylaws, issuing shares, and implementing an estate plan, give Jesson & Rains a call! The privilege license tax is a tax levied on the privilege of conducting a particular trade or business. If you are a professional that is licensed by a board, you most likely should be paying state privilege license tax every year (for example, accounts, attorneys, general contractors, realtors). There are some exceptions to this requirement, like professionals working for the government or non-practicing physicians, to name a couple.
However, there are some surprising professions on this list; most notably, photographers. A list of applicable professions can be found here: https://files.nc.gov/ncdor/documents/files/instructions_b202a_application_for_state_privilege_license_2-18_web_v3_final_3.pdf And the license application can be found here: https://files.nc.gov/ncdor/documents/files/webfill_version_b202a_application_for_state_privilege_license.pdf The license is issued to the individual and not the business. While the individual can go ahead and form his/her business, the license should be applied for before beginning business. It is unlawful to engage in business without obtaining a required privilege license. The penalty for failure to obtain a license is the greater of five dollars ($5) or five percent (5%) of the amount prescribed for the license per month or fraction thereof from the time the amount is due until the amount is paid, up to a maximum not to exceed twenty-five percent (25%). The privilege license tax is annual and is due by July 1 of each year. The penalty for failure to pay any tax when due is ten percent (10%) of the tax due. Because the license is issued to the individual and not the business, if an individual is engaged in more than one business, he/she will have to obtain a privilege license for each business. If you are a licensed psychologist who has a photography business on the side, you must obtain two privilege licenses and pay two taxes, for example. The license must be displayed conspicuously at the location of the licensed business, trade, or profession. If you have questions about the privilege tax, please give us a call! |
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