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Written by : Doug Gutherie |
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how to form an LLC in Virginia Virginia is an excellent place to form a new LLC with a strong economic climate and the second-highest ease of doing business in the country every state has slightly different requirements for forming an LLC follow along closely to learn the required steps for creating your own limited liability company in the state of Virginia there are two ways to form an LLC in Virginia you can form one yourself or you can hire a service to do it for you let's start by looking at the five basic requirements to form an LLC in Virginia on your own you can also find these steps and more detail on our website linked in the description below 1 name your LLC every state has its own rules about what kind of names are allowed for LLC's in general you will need to observe these naming guidelines your name must include the phrase limited liability company or one of its abbreviations LLC or LLC with a period following each letter restricted words such as Bank Attorney law office etc may require additional paperwork and may also need a licensed professional to be part of the LLC your name cannot include words that could confuse your LLC with a government agency such as FBI Treasury State Department etc you cannot use a name that has already been registered to see if your name is available in your state you will need to do a name search this free service is available on your state's Secretary of State website check out our free guide for finding the direct link to your state we also recommend that you check to see if your business name is available as a web domain even if you don't plan to make a business website today you may want to buy the URL in order to prevent others from acquiring it to choose a registered agent Virginia requires that you nominate a registered agent for your LLC who is your business's point of contact with the state the registered agent can be an individual within the company including yourself or you can hire professional service authorized to do business in Virginia they will send and receive legal papers on your behalf these documents include official correspondence like legal summons and document filings which your registered agent will receive and forward to you your registered agent will help remind you to file the Serah reports failure to properly maintain your LLC can result in fines and dissolution so this assistance is valuable 3 file the articles of organization to register your Virginia LLC you will need to file the articles of organization with the state of Virginia this can be done online or by mail you will need to state whether your LLC will be member managed or manager managed member managed means all members of the LLC manage the company this is good for small organizations where everyone is involved in the day-to-day operations the second option is manager managed where individuals are appointed to manage the LLC this is appropriate for larger organizations where not everyone is involved in the day-to-day affairs of the business 4 create an operating agreement although not every state requires it you should always create an operating agreement to establish ownership terms and member roles for your LLC this foundational document is the core of your LLC and will help you maintain your organization as well as further establish your LLC is a separate legal entity there are six main sections of an operating agreement organization outlines when and where the company was created who the members are and how the ownership is structured management and voting addresses how the company is managed as well as how the members vote capital contributions covers which members financially support the LLC and how more funds will be raised in the future distributions outlines how the company's profits and losses are shared among members membership changes describes the process for adding or removing members as well as if and when members can transfer their ownership shares and dissolution which explains the circumstances in which the LLC may be dissolved an operating agreement is an internal document it does not need to be filed with the state however it should be updated every time there is a change in membership or management at the company you can download a free sample operating agreement or create a custom one using our free operating agreement tool at how to start an LLC com 5 obtain an ein lastly you'll need to get an employer identification number or ein from the IRS also known as a federal tax identification number your EIN is like a social security number for your LLC and is how the IRS tracks your business for purposes an EIN is also necessary to open a business banking account and legally hire employees eons are free of charge and can be obtained from the IRS online or through the mail and with that you will have formed a Virginia LLC on your own option to hire professional service the second way to create a Virginia LLC is to hire professional service to create your LLC for you hiring a professional service to file your forms and act as your registered agent for the LLC will cost you an additional fifty to one hundred and fifty dollars however there are several benefits to working with a pro a hired registered agent helps with getting your reports filed on time helps you stay organized by keeping your business mail separate and is available at all regular business hours to accept official mail and legal papers on your LLC's behalf a final and important additional benefit of using a service is privacy a professional service will provide a level of privacy by withholding your personal name and home address from the LLC's contact information there are many reasons why you might not want your personal information easily accessible and associated with your business hiring a professional LLC for mation service is an easy way to accomplish this now that you have seen the different requirements and ways you can form an LLC in Virginia visit our site and take some time to research your options and establish a solid foundation for your business activities click on the links in the description below to research the top five professional formation services or get more information on how to form a Virginia LLC on your own now you know all the steps to form an LLC in your state for a more detailed guide go to how to start an LLC com you can also create an operating agreement and use our business plan tool free of charge give the video a like if you found it useful and subscribe if you'd like to see more and if you have questions or encounter any roadblocks leave a comment below good luck and starting your small business you
Thanks for your comment Ozell Trebon, have a nice day.
- Doug Gutherie, Staff Member
hey my name is eric in today's video we're talking about how to form or create an llc in virginia so in this video what i'm going to do is i'm going to walk you through three different ways that you can do this the first way is actually using the virginia state website and it's kind of like a diy route but going through that official website the second method is you can use an attorney but i'm going to show you how you can vet some attorneys and also be able to filter it down so that you can get attorneys that focus on llcs but also offer free consultations on top of it and then the third route i'm gonna show you some pre-online tools that you can also use as well some of the key takeaways for this video is we will be discussing what an llc actually does because sometimes there's some misinformation on that and some really important things about an llc is understanding what piercing the corporate veil means if you're not familiar with that term you've never heard that term before you're definitely going to want to stay on this video because we're going to talk about how that relates to your business finances and also if you have a registered agent set up i'm going to explain what all this means for you as we get into this video the very first thing i want to do though is i want to share a resource with you which just comes from inkfile which is an online tool that you can register an llc through but they have a learning center here with a ton of helpful resources and one of the things that i find really helpful is the business checklist so you'll find it right here start a business checklist i know from starting my own business that it's very overwhelming you have so many things that you're thinking about there's so many things to overlook well this is a great resource and that it'll walk you through with really simple drop down boxes like this that kind of give you a blurb on each section and each step that you need to consider as you're going through your journey now this is a good opportunity to mention that every resource mentioned in this video is going to be in the description of this video if you're on mobile you may have to click a little down arrow to see it but if you're on desktop you'll just have to click the show more button so that you can see all the resources mentioned from this video so let's start off with the irs website so they have some resources on limited liability companies this is important because if you are running a business there's a good chance that you're going to need an ein numbered an employee identification number this article here will let you know if you do need one and the reason i mention this now is that a lot of services are going to do this for you but they're going to do it at an upcharge this is something that you can do yourself it is a little bit of a pain in the butt because you're going through the irs but you're going to need an ein number most likely so i wanted to give you this resource and again it'll be in the description below now the first method for setting up an llc in virginia is to go directly through the state website so what we're looking at right here is virginia limited liability companies and this is showing us all of the possible forms that you could possibly have along with what the fee is for filing that form so what you're going to be looking at is the articles of organization of a virginia limited liability company and it's a hundred dollar fee for filing that with the state you'll find that about a hundred bucks is really in the middle um every state in the u.s for the most part charges the fee for filing there is no way to get around this so if you go directly through the state you're gonna pay a hundred dollars if you go through an attorney there's gonna be a hundred dollar filing fee and if you go online through an online tool there's gonna be a hundred dollar filing fee so let's start off with the virginia website so scc.virginia.gov and what you can see here is new business resources there's a lot of different places you can go on here one of the first i want to show you is all the forms and fees and again i'll have this link in the description below so as you open this up what you do is you go to virginia limited liability companies and here you'll be able to find the forms that you're looking for and specifically articles of organization of a virginia limited liability company now you should know that it's a hundred dollars to file these you're not going to get around that fee in any way possible if you go directly through the virginia website you're gonna pay a hundred dollar filing fee if you go through an attorney there's gonna be a hundred dollar filing fee that they may lump inside of their fee uh and then also if you use a free online tool hundred dollar filing fee so if you are creating a new business what you can do is you can click here and then what that'll do is it gives you a few different options on how you can create the new business uh probably the easiest way is to register an account by clicking this green button and then you can go through their online registration process now a lot of times these state websites the thing that i don't like is they don't do a great job of explaining all of the aspects of what you're signing up for and what's important so for example this is actually the form that i mentioned earlier for your articles of organization like i said there's a hundred dollar filing fee now if you go down to article two registered agent it starts to talk about what a registered agent is where the registered office is but it doesn't really get into the details so this time i think it would be a good time to explain exactly what an llc does because i want to get into piercing the corporate bail and registered agents so some people think that they're going to set up an llc for some sort of tax advantage or tax purpose that's not why you set it up it is for limiting your liability and specifically what it does is it creates a division between your business assets and your personal assets so in the unfortunate case if you were to get sued by somebody what would happen is if you have a legit llc and there's no cracks in your llc they're only going to be able to go after your business assets and not your personal home your personal car your personal bank accounts but where there's an issue with analysis is if it's not set up correctly or not maintained properly what it's called is piercing the corporate veil that's what the attorney suing you is going to try to do they're going to try to find a crack in your llc and pierce the corporate veil and one of the common ways that this is done is through the registered agent so what a registered agent is is it's a third party that is always required when you're setting up an llc and what they do is they accept important legal documents from the state and federal level they make sure that you're processing any notices especially if you're being sued by somebody they do official federal government correspondence information notifications tax forms and requests for payment and request to complete p
Thanks Dalila your participation is very much appreciated
- Doug Gutherie
About the author
I've studied environmental law at Winthrop University in Rock Hill and I am an expert in space tourism. I usually feel content. My previous job was plasterers and stucco masons I held this position for 18 years, I love talking about worldbuilding and karate. Huge fan of Steve Irwin I practice gaelic games and collect breweriana.
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