This guide will walk you through the 7 Steps to Starting a Business in Colorado. Tips on coming up with business name, getting your website started yourself, registering your business with the Colorado Secretary of State, and more! Read this guide for a simple, step-by-step process.
Want to know how much it costs to set up your own Colorado LLC? In this guide, you’ll learn the fees and details for: Articles of Organization ($50), Registered Agent ($0 or $125), Operating Agreement ($0), Federal Tax ID Number ($0), and Periodic Report ($10). Forming an LLC in Colorado is really quite affordable. The average cost to form an LLC in the US is over $130, so with Colorado’s LLC fee only being $50, it’s a really great state to be doing business in.
There are two main benefits to forming an LLC in Colorado: personal liability protection and pass-through taxation. We’ll discuss the most important one first. Personal liability protection is a benefit found both in Corporations and LLCs. It builds a “wall of protection” between your personal assets and the assets of the business. If your business gets sued, your personal assets cannot be used to pay off any debts or liabilities.
None of the 50 states have rules or restrictions about whether or not you have to use a comma. You can use a comma in your LLC or you can leave it out if you prefer. The more traditional and commonly seen is the comma (ABC Widgets, LLC). And by more commonly seen, I mean with-the-comma LLCs encompass over 80% of registered LLCs in most states.
When you are considering whether to form a Limited Liability Company (LLC) for your business, one of the first questions you may ask yourself is whether you will form the LLC by yourself or with a spouse or maybe a business partner. In our conversations with potential clients, we often hear people say they want to “LLC myself”. This is a common misconception as you are not “LLC’ing” yourself. Setting up an LLC creates a legal entity to hold your business assets in order to protect your personal assets from lawsuits filed against your business.
We see a lot of advice in the online business world about waiting until your income hits a certain level before you form an LLC. I don’t think this is a good idea. In fact, this is bad advice. Making money has nothing to do with risk and liability. If you don’t have a couple hundred dollars to form an LLC, you should consider saving up before starting your online business.
The answer to this question depends on how many properties you own. If you own less than 10, than typically, smart real estate investors setup a new LLC for each property. Once you get over 10-12 properties, managing all of the different LLCs (and their individual bank accounts) can become quite tedious. Once you get to that point, a strategy and entity structure meeting with a savvy real estate attorney is recommended.
To get full liability protection, you need to purchase your property and obtain your financing in the name of the LLC and order for that LLC to protect your personal assets. However, if you’ve already bought property in your personal name and you want to transfer it to the LLC the biggest thing that’s going to hold you up is a mortgage. You need to talk to the lender/the bank.
A Professional LLC (PLLC) is a type of limited liability company formed for the purpose of providing professional services. Professional services are those where a person is licensed by the state for the service they provide. In most states, all members of a PLLC are required to be licensed. Who needs to form a PLLC? It does vary by state, but usually the following professionals will need to form a PLLC…