how much to start llc in louisiana [Must-Know Tips]

Last updated : Aug 21, 2022

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from the exuberant street party that is mardi gras to the elegant charm of new orleans french quarter louisiana is a deep south melting pot of french african cajun and creole culture louisiana excels in numerous industries including tourism film agriculture gaming and natural resources after the devastation of hurricane katrina the bayou state's economy has rebounded remarkably and it has since been consistently ranked as one of the most small business friendly states so if you're ready to get down to the bayou and start your louisiana llc here are all the steps you need to take step 1 collect your information gather up names and addresses of all your llc members you'll need them to file your formation paperwork step 2 choose a business name you'll need a unique name that isn't already in use by another louisiana business need some ideas inc files business name search tool will get you started step 3 designate an official street address make your business official and help customers find it with a louisiana address inkfile's virtual address service can help whether you're working from home or in the state or out of state you'll be able to receive and read your mail from anywhere step 4 name a registered agent a registered agent is responsible for receiving all your businesses important legal documents when you form your llc with ink file registered agent service is free for the first year step 5 get an ein or employer identification number you'll need this to get business credit submit payroll and file taxes step six file your articles of organization with the louisiana secretary of state ready to make your business a raging cajun success skip the hassle and let inkfile handle the paperwork with our zero dollars plus state fee louisiana llc so you can handle the rest

Thanks for your comment Bethany Cazarez, have a nice day.
- Herb Henly, Staff Member

today we're talking about how to start an llc in louisiana my name is eric and in this video i'm going to show you three different ways you can set up an llc one is going through your state website another one is also doing it yourself through free online legal tools and the third is how do you find an attorney somebody that you can trust that can set up an llc for you and the cool thing about the attorney side of it is i'm going to give you a tip on how you can get a free 15-minute consult as well but before we get to all that there are three things i want to make you aware of just in case you're not familiar with them and these terms are piercing the corporate veil registered agent and commingling funds now if you don't know what those words are and what they exactly mean as it pertains to an llc you're going to want to watch this entire video because it's really important that you understand those so that there are no cracks in your llc so why don't we get started by we google louisiana llc you go down first listing here organic listing is the state website now the first thing i want to make you aware of is that you can search for louisiana business filings and then what we're going to do is go over here to this link and what this link's going to allow us to do is search for your entity name you want a name that is not already taken now as you imagine if i were to put saints in here there's going to be a lot of businesses with the word saints in it and you can see that just because you have saints inc saints saints alive cafe renew auto sales all sorts of businesses with that name and you see all the pages down here now if we were to do a new search and i was just kind of put you know whatever just kind of type some things in on the keyboard what you're going to find here is it's going to say that there are no active records shown right there's nothing beneath that black bar there that's what you want when you're naming your business you want to make sure that you have a unique name that is not already an active record in the llc records so i just wanted to make you aware of that now if we go back a little bit uh and you know always have issues with the state websites uh what you're gonna do is click start a business and then file original documents if you're going through the state website it's going to have you create an account which i've already done and then once you get into that account what you'll do is you'll click get started and it's going to walk you through step by step of what you need to do now the issue that i have with state websites is i think that they gloss over details too quickly and i'll give you a good example of that i'm going to go to this um report here that i've already started setting up an llc and this particular step here it's talking about the um the company's registered office so you read that and you're like alright registered office is that like where we're doing business what does that mean what they're getting at and they're going to ask in the future steps here is they're going to start asking you about who your registered agent is and a lot of these sites what they do is they say who's your registered agent and you're not sure who that is so you go i don't know like my buddy down the street my cousin over here and people just kind of throw something together because they don't understand all the terms and how it affects the llc that they're setting up so before i explain what a registered agent is i think it's a good thing to go back and explain exactly what an llc does and what it doesn't do and then go from there because the reason i think this is important is a lot of people think they're setting up an llc and there's some sort of tax advantage there is not that's not why you set up an llc it's strictly for limiting your liability so once you set up your llc you know you can kind of picture it this way on the left-hand side of the screen here is your business and your business assets it could be the furniture you know the office itself things like that and on the right-hand side you have your personal assets so these are things such as your personal home personal car personal bank accounts when you get an llc it draws a division between your personal assets and your business assets that division is known as the corporate veil but what happens is is you if you have a good llc and you have that corporate veil when somebody sues you they can come after your business assets but not your personal assets but what that attorney is going to try to do is they're going to try to pierce the corporate fail and if they are able to do that what basically what they're able to do is find a crack in your llc that division disappears and then they're able to come after not only your business assets but your personal assets as well so that's what an llc does it helps protect those personal assets and separate them from the business now one of the ways that they may try to pierce the corporate fail is looking into your registered agent and seeing if this is a legit registered agent and if they have made any mistakes for you and your business now a nice article on this is on ink file here if you're not familiar with ink file it's a free online legal tool and all the links that i am mentioning in this video by the way they will be in the description below um if any of them are affiliate links that will mark them as a paid link but most of these are just free resources and now if we go down here it talks about these five quick bullet points of registered agent official letters and correspondence from your secretary of state so this third party that has a separate address from your business is pulling in these documents and making sure they're getting forwarded to you service or process notices so basically if you get sued that you appear in court very important official federal government correspondents information notifications tax forms and requests for payments and requests to complete permits company filings or reports so this registered agent is really helping you dot your eyes and cross your t's when it comes to your llc so they're really important for making sure things are legit and you have no cracks so an attorney can't pierce the corporate fail and come after your personal home car and bank accounts so very important now as you go through the state websites like i mentioned they kind of just gloss over these kind of details and i never really liked that because i feel like you need to have your hand held a little bit more if you're walking through the process i think the ink file does a really great job of this they've helped set up over 500 000 businesses and what i find is a lot of times the state websites you know they don't have the same budgets or at least they don't care as much as some of these online legal tools because these tools have spent a lot of time and energy to create something that really guides you through the process and one of the things i like about this is that you can get set up for as little as zero dollars plus state fee the state fee in louisiana you're looking at about a h

Thanks muscoviteM your participation is very much appreciated
- Herb Henly

About the author

Herb Henly

I've studied early childhood education at Colorado State University in Fort Collins and I am an expert in population genetics. I usually feel sad. My previous job was artillery and missile crew member I held this position for 8 years, I love talking about australian rules football and learning. Huge fan of Justin Bartha I practice floor exercises and collect coca-cola.