Of all these decisions, perhaps none is more important or has a more significant impact on your success (or failure) than your choice of business entity structure. The entity you choose for your business will affect everything contracted by your company. Your business entity will determine the amount of taxes you pay, what kind of records you keep, and how vulnerable your assets are to lawsuits.

Among the different business entities, all companies should be one of the following legal structures: a sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, or limited liability company (LLC). Last week in part one, we discussed the first two of four leading factors to consider when selecting your entity, and here, we cover the final two. 

Of all these decisions, perhaps none is more important or has a more significant impact on your success (or failure) than your choice of business entity structure. Indeed, the entity you choose for your business will affect everything from the amount of taxes you pay and what kind of records you are required to keep to how vulnerable your assets are to lawsuits incurred by your company. 

Among the different business entities, all companies should be one of the following legal structures: a sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, or limited liability company (LLC). While you should consult with us, your Family Business Lawyer™ before making your final decision, here are four of the leading factors to consider when selecting the entity that’s best suited for your particular business. 

That said, the rules for deducting meal and entertainment expenses from your taxes have changed quite a bit over the last few years. And these changes have made understanding exactly what you can (and cannot) write off on your tax return pretty confusing. 

For example, in some circumstances, a business-related meal is 100% deductible, while in others, the same meal is only 50% deductible. Yet other times, a business meal is totally nondeductible. It all boils down to a few factors: the meal’s purpose, who provides the meal, and who benefits from the meal. 

Legislation Brings New Rules

To boost business spending at restaurants following the pandemic, Congress added a provision to the Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) passed in December 2020 that makes the cost of business-related meals served in a restaurant 100% deductible—but only for 2021 and 2022. Previously, deductions for business meals at restaurants were limited to 50%.

Once you have come up with a winning name and logo, you will want to safeguard your investment with the proper legal protections. For the maximum level of protection and to protect the investment you are making in your business, you should register your business name and logo with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

That said, registering a trademark with the USPTO can be a lengthy and complex process, especially if you aren’t familiar with intellectual property law. While you should always work with an experienced business lawyer like us to register your trademark, you can use these answers to some commonly asked questions about trademarks and the trademark registration process as a quick-and-easy reference.

And even after your operation grows beyond its fledgling period, contractors are often vital for completing one-off projects or rounding out your team during particularly busy periods. That said, working with ICs also creates a number of unique legal and financial risks for your company.

Outside of the risk of getting sued or hit with hefty fines for misclassifying an employee as a contractor,  you must also be careful to properly secure ownership of anything an IC creates for you. This is particularly true when it comes to intellectual property (IP).

To make certain that your business—and the income it generates for your family—would continue to run smoothly when something happens to you, you need to create a comprehensive estate plan, and it really needs to include a trust. Without such a plan in place, your business will be stuck in an unnecessary court process that could easily cause the loss of everything you’ve worked so hard to build.

A Will Alone Is Not Enough

When it comes to creating an estate plan, most people typically think of a will. While it’s possible to leave your company to someone in your will, it’s far from the ideal option. That’s because, upon your death, all assets passed through a will must first go through the court process known as probate. The cost and time of probate and the complexity of a court making decisions about your business assets are wholly unnecessary. 

That said, though it’s bound to be just as—if not more—challenging than maintaining a romantic relationship, if you are able to stick it out and grow through the experience, establish appropriate boundaries, and respect each other’s differences, building a business with your spouse or significant other can be one of the most rewarding experiences of your life. 

To improve your odds of success, here are four things that have enabled successful couples to make their working relationships work:

1. Formally Document Your Business Relationship

Getting married involves taking vows and signing a marriage license, and you should treat your business relationship with an equal degree of formality. Before opening your doors, clearly outline the terms and conditions of your company’s ownership, operation, and dissolution in formal legal agreements that are signed by you both. Just creating these agreements will often show you how well you’ll be able to work together and handle hard conversations. 

This was exactly the case for my mentor, Ali Katz, who went from losing $1 million to running a company that earns over $5 million a year. Indeed, Ali was able to not only learn from her early missteps as a lawyer and businesswoman, but she capitalized on those lessons by creating New Law Business Model, which trains lawyers like me to help families and business owners not repeat the same expensive mistakes she made.

Here, we share four of the most important lessons Ali learned on her way to success, which have been adapted from a recent Grow By Acorns article Ali was featured in.

The CTA is an update to the federal government’s anti-money laundering laws and is designed to crack down on shell companies created for illicit financial activities, such as money laundering and funding terrorist organizations.

While the CTA is aimed at providing greater transparency into who owns and controls small businesses in the U.S., it stands to impact many legitimate small companies by requiring them to provide reports on the identities of their owners. At the same time, the new law may also affect future business transactions, such as mergers and acquisitions, by making the process more logistically complex, with less privacy for certain organizational structures like limited liability companies (LLCs), which have historically been used to avoid disclosing detailed ownership information.

As the founder of a nonprofit, you will still be “in business,” and you’ll have to deal with many of the same things for-profit business owners face when running their companies. The main difference is, when running a nonprofit, you’ll be working in service to your mission, rather than in service to yourself or to the other owners of your business—and that’s because there are no “owners” of nonprofits!

Ownership is just one of many unique aspects involved with starting a nonprofit, and there are several other important factors you should consider before launching your own organization. Last week, in part one of this series, we outlined a few of the most critical things you should know about nonprofit startups, and here we’ll finish our discussion.