file llc in california online [With Pictures]



Last updated : Sept 22, 2022
Written by : Williams Harton
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file llc in california online

How do I apply for an LLC in California?

To form an LLC in California, go to bizfileOnline.sos.ca.gov, log in, select Register a Business under the Business Entities Tile, Articles of Organization - CA LLC and follow the prompts to complete and submit.

What documents are needed for a California LLC?

Creating your LLC in California requires two separate filings: Articles of Incorporation, and a Statement of Information. Your Articles of Incorporation form your business in California and the Statement of Information is a periodic filing first required within 90 days of formation.

How long does it take for an LLC to be approved in California?

Mail filings: In total, mail filing approvals for California LLCs take 2-3 weeks. This accounts for the 3-5 business day processing time, plus the time your documents are in the mail. Online filings: In total, online filing approvals for California LLCs take 3-5 business days.

What are the 3 types of LLC?

  • Single-member LLC for the sole-proprietorship (solo entrepreneur)
  • Multi-member LLC (member-managed LLC or manager-member LLC)
  • Domestic LLC and Foreign LLC.
  • Series LLC.
  • L3C Company (low-profit LLC)
  • Anonymous LLC.
  • Restricted LLC.
  • PLLC and LLC.

Does an LLC need a business license in California?

LLCs, Corporations, LPs, LLPs, or GPs operating in California need to register and form their legal entity with the California Secretary of State's Office, file appropriate taxes, register as an employer, and obtain business licenses and other permits from appropriate cities or counties.

Is the $900 LLC fee deductible for California?

The additional $800 annual Franchise Tax and potential gross receipts tax on LLCs make doing business in California a little more expensive than doing business in almost any other state. But the costs to form and maintain your California LLC are deductible on your federal income tax, so you can find some savings!

How can I avoid $800 franchise tax?

Thus, the only way to avoid the tax is to dissolve the company. Additionally, another important detail to note is that if you change your business structure during the year–for instance, from an LLC to a C corporation–you would then be subject to the minimum franchise tax on both entities for that year.

How do I pay the $800 franchise tax?

The state requires corporations to pay either $800 or the corporation's net income multiplied by its applicable corporate tax rate, whichever is larger. You may pay the tax online, by mail, or in person at the California Franchise Tax Board Field Offices.

Does a California single member LLC need an EIN?

An LLC will need an EIN if it has any employees or if it will be required to file any of the excise tax forms listed below. Most new single-member LLCs classified as disregarded entities will need to obtain an EIN.

Can I be my own registered agent?

You can act as your own Registered Agent for a corporation or LLC as long as you have a physical street address in the state where your corporation or LLC is formed. The actual corporation or LLC being formed, however, cannot name itself as its own Registered Agent.

Do I need a state tax ID number in California?

If you plan on selling taxable goods and services in the state of California, or if you'll owe excise taxes (which are associated with specific products, like alcohol or tobacco products), you'll need a California state tax ID in addition to your federal tax ID.

What are the benefits of an LLC in California?

  • Pass-through taxation.
  • Tax options like S corp.
  • Simplicity.
  • Ownership flexibility.
  • Increased credibility.
  • Name registration.

How long is an LLC good for in California?

You'll need to file your first Statement of Information within 90 days after the state approves your California LLC. Afterwards, you must submit it once every 2 years to keep your business in good standing.

How do I apply for LLC?

  1. Choose a Business Name.
  2. Check the Availability of Your Business Name.
  3. Register a DBA Name.
  4. File Your LLC's Articles of Organization.
  5. Designate a Registered Agent.
  6. Draft an Operating Agreement.
  7. Fulfill the Publication Requirement.
  8. Obtain Business Permits and Licenses.

Do LLCs pay taxes?

All of the profits and losses of the LLC "pass through" the business to the LLC owners (called members), who report this information on their personal tax returns. The LLC itself does not pay federal income taxes, although some states impose an annual tax on LLCs.

How does an LLC avoid paying taxes?

A general Corporation making a Subchapter “S” Election or an LLC with or without a Subchapter S Election pays no federal tax on its taxable income and no employment taxes on its distributions to stockholders.

Can I be my own registered agent in California?

You can be your own registered agent in California, but you'll have to list your name and address in the public record. Many business owners don't want the hassle that comes with this (unsolicited phone calls, junk mail offers, etc.). Hiring a registered agent keeps your information out of the public record.

Can I write off my car with an LLC?

The Internal Revenue Service identifies taxpayers who qualify to claim a business vehicle write off as: Self-employed individuals. Sole proprietors and owners of limited liability companies (LLCs) with a tax classification that allows pass-through income on Tax Form 1040 qualify for the write off.

Does LLC or business license come first?

In most states, forming an LLC doesn't require a business license, but you'll need to follow your state's procedures. An LLC requires registering with the state and filing the appropriate forms. But even though you don't need a business license to form an LLC, you probably need one to operate the LLC as a business.

How much is a California business license?

In general, most CA small businesses will pay between $50 and $100 for a general business license. Larger corporations may be subject to charges based on their projected revenue.


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file llc in california online


Comment by Hobert Twohatchet

hey this is attorney elizabeth weinstein and today we're going to talk about how to file an llc in california step by step so the first thing you need to do before you go ahead and create your llc in california your limited liability company in california you need to have a few decisions already made and a few pieces of information put together the first thing is the name of your llc most people just call it such and such llc there are other suffixes that you can use and you will talk about that when we dive into the website the second is you need the address for your business you're going to need both a street address a physical address and you can also have a mailing address that's different like a p.o box usually a po box isn't going to count for a street address the next thing you're going to need is the name of your registered agent a registered agent is someone it could be a person or another business that has a street address that's it's going to accept any legal documents on your behalf which doesn't happen at very often but you still have to have this requirement you can do it yourself but if you work from home that means that your home address is going to be on the public record which you may not want to do so you can select an outside registered agent to provide this service for you some registered agents will also let you use that address as the street address for your small business so when you want to create your llc in california you can do that straight at the website for the california secretary of state here's what it looks like filing online there's a number of filings that you can do including also forming a corporation or a state registration for your trademark and things like that but we're going to be filing an llc today so we click on llc formation here they are letting you know that the filing fee in california is seventy dollars plus an extra five dollars if you want a certified copy of your filings i recommend paying the extra five bucks to get that certified copy because sometimes you need it for for setting up your bank account or other purposes this is letting you know that everything that you file is public so something to be aware of if you're if you're not aware of this already is that any information you put in here including any addresses are in the public record in the database that anybody can search so you're accepting all the various policies so the first decision is putting in your name of your llc so let's say i'm going to put in weinstein consultant and i'm just going to use the llc designation but there's a lot of other choices you can put dots with the llc you can call it a limited liability company and limited liability co ltd liability company ltd liability co i would recommend most of the time you want to just do llc because it keeps the name shorter okay but in some cases if you're just using one word it maybe make more sense to have a different ending here i'm just going to put llc now you can reserve the name of an llc that you're going to file later i don't hardly ever do this because we just decide we're going to do it and go ahead and create the filing but just be aware this is something you can do also before you go ahead and form your llc you may want to search the database and make sure no one else has dibs on that name so here we're filling out the street address for the business you can use the address lookup tool which will help you format the address correctly but you don't actually have to do this if your street address is also your mailing address because you have an office then you would go ahead and just click yes here if it's not it gives you an opportunity to put in any address including addresses in other countries but i'm just going to say yes now the service of process is who is going to be there to accept legal documents on your behalf if you click individual you can fill in anything your name with your address if you click california registered agent you're going to be selecting something from this list below now you don't want to just randomly select something here you want to have already set up an account with them otherwise it's very awkward so let's say i set up an account with northwest registered agent and i'm going to use them as a registered agent for this business but i could also put myself as an individual with my address the management structure of your llc is who is going to have control over the day-to-day aspects of the business to do filings etc if you're a one-owner business most the time i just have all llc members here because it makes the operating agreement that much more simple however if you have an llc where you have three or 10 or 50 different members or which is the name of what an owner is called for an llc it doesn't make sense to have 20 different people who can all do stuff on behalf of the llc that's just a mess so it can make sense to have the members be more owners like the shareholders of a company like i own shares of stock in public companies but i can't like tell the companies what to do on a day-to-day basis right so you may have one manager or multiple managers running that business in this case i'm just going to say all llc members the organizer of the business is the human person who is filing this so for my clients i'm putting myself if you're doing it for yourself for your own lsa you'd put your own name here so i'm putting myself and then we have the file date the file date is the date that your llc actually starts most the time you're going to have it be the same time that you're filing however occasionally you want to be some future date so for example let's say you're creating an llc in mid-december and you're not planning to actually start this business until january 1st so what you can do is you can create the llc in mid-december and have it be effective as of january 1st that's the best way to start a business on january 1st is to file it sometime in december so that we can go through the process and be effective on january 1st because otherwise if you try to file it on january 1st it'll end up not going through until later because it's a holiday right but here i don't want a future date now the last thing that you're going to do is review all this information and make sure that it's correct and then you're going to enter in a payment one thing to be aware of you want to do the filing and certified copy that's what i generally recommend and for the credit card here you can't use american express which is always an issue for me because that's my main credit card for my business you have to use a mastercard or a visa now if you don't have a credit card to use to file this you're not going to be able to file it online so you're going to be able to write a check to file it via mail that will take longer i'm not submitting this right now because this isn't a real filing but the next last thing you do have to put in the money is submit and then it's going to take a few days to be approved hopefully it will be approved a human person looks at this to make sure that it's correct so it might take two days it might take a


Thanks for your comment Hobert Twohatchet, have a nice day.
- Williams Harton, Staff Member


Comment by Osvaldo

hey this is attorney elizabeth weinstein and today we're going to go over how to create an llc in california using california's new online filing system so an llc or limited liability company is a kind of business entity that you can create in every state in the united states and in california like in many states if not every state by now there's an online filing system this online filing system to create the llc changed in april of 2022 and so while i have done tutorials like this before it needs to be re-recorded because the system is now different so let's get into how you would create your llc in california so the first thing you're going to do is go to the biz file online website so if you go to the actual secretary of state's website you click on business then you can click on biz file online but i'll put a direct link in the description in the comments so when you go on here it's going to tell you that the first thing you need to do is to create a login so you click on login i of course have a login already but you'll just click on don't have an account sign up you just need to put in your email a password first and last name and then you have a login it's not really a big deal so now you're in biz file on online and you're actually logged in you're going to go to forms to create your llc so first thing is name reservations you do not have to reserve a name before you create an llc or corporation this is if you're not going to create the llc or corporation right now and you want to do it way ahead of time and make sure the name's gonna go through this can also be if you're trying to create a llc or corporation with the name that you don't know if it's gonna comply with the rules and you want them to approve it the element of liability company initial filings is articles of organization articles organization with statement of conversion that's if you're converting your llc from being in another state you're changing where it's domesticated and then a registration of an out of state llc so today we're doing the articles of organization so there's going to be online processing fee of 70 let's click on the filing online so first all the filings and contents are available to the public so everything that you put in this filing your address all that stuff is available to the public so this is just letting you know that it's going to be in a database and people are going to download it and send you spam i mean that's what happens and it also gives you information about how you can't use this for fraud et cetera et cetera you should everyone should read this and i've gone through this multiple times already and i've read that okay so submitter information this is something that's optional but i recommend you put this in here with your name and your email and your phone number because if something goes wrong they theoretically contact you and literally never had the state call me on the phone but this new system they might email you i don't know yet because it literally started last week but under the old system they would send you a letter and that just sucks it took forever typically you could call them though so under this new system they might send you an email something messes up so i'm going to put in my name and email and phone number all right so this is just giving you a notification that you cannot use an llc for professional services professional services are typically things like you're a lawyer you're a doctor you're a therapist you've taken some tests to be licensed to practice your profession in your state and typically you usually need to have a professional llc or a professional corporation if you're licensed as a professional in california they don't have a professional llc it's just professional corporations i'll do a video in the future on what is a professional corporation and who needs to do that and how do you do that because it's much more detailed than we need to go into now so let's assume you're not a professional corporation let's say you're doing consulting for the sake of the argument and there's no previously rever reserved name so now you need to put in the llc company name i'm going to make up a name pots weinstein consulting llc pots weinstein consulting llc this is my fictional llc name it's probably searching it to make sure it's not taken and then the address this is my business address for my law firm and then we're going to copy the same address which is so convenient that they let you do that you can also put in a attention if you there are multiple people who could get mail at that address and you want to come to you let's go to the next step who is going to be the agent for service of process so every llc or corporation in california and in most other states not all needs to have a registered agent who is a person or an entity that's not the llc or corporation itself who can accept legal documents on behalf of the llc or corporation and the idea is someone's there like in person to get served with documents this almost never happens but it can happen so that it has to be on file so it could be you the human person who owns the business and you could also instead hire a service like northwest registered agent services which is who i refer a lot of people to and you pay them and then they're the ones who handle that for you and they tip people typically charge 100 to 300 a year for that and you can definitely go on the low end you do not need to pay the big bucks for it in this case i'm going to say that i'm the registered agent so i'm going to put in my name i'm going to copy over the address there you go now the management structure okay so you have three options for the management structure the llc will be managed by one manager by more than one manager by all llc members so here's kind of the difference the idea is all llc members means everybody who owns the business can run the business make decisions about the business if it's just one person that's probably fine right and if it's two of you that might be fine too but let's say there's five or 10 or 20 people who own this llc or maybe there's one person who owns it and then the other person is more of a passive investor they're not there running it on a day-to-day basis or maybe one person owns it and there's another person who does work in the business but they only own five percent of the shares five percent of the ownership so a manager is anybody doesn't have to be one of the owners who runs the business on a day-to-day basis this can also work if the owner of the llc isn't a human the owner is another corporation if it's a your revocable living trust if it's some other kind of entity that's not a human person so it can't run the thing then the manager is the human person who actually runs it you can hire someone else to it or it can just be you and obviously it can be one manager or more than one so i'm just going to say all llc members in this case because it's just me doing this fictional consulting business the filing date so most of the time you're going to do the current date today when you're filing this and when it when they r


Thanks Osvaldo your participation is very much appreciated
- Williams Harton


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