how to look up llc in south carolina [Expert Review]
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Last updated : Aug 19, 2022
Written by : Sherrell Carles |
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Comment by Claude Rafanan
do you want to create an llc in south carolina this year but are unsure where to begin today you will learn about the most common ways to start your business including the correct forms you'll need how to register your llc critical naming requirements and all other vital tips and tricks then as a bonus later on in the video i will reveal to you a trustworthy registered agent who will help set up your llc for free so make sure to stick with me until the end the state of south carolina like other states has several specific llc requirements there are three main ways you can start an llc in south carolina first is the diy or do-it-yourself process where you mostly depend on south carolina state's website the second way is hiring a professional service that practically offers more efficiency and security in the process of creating your llc while the third one is hiring an attorney we will skip the attorney hiring portion because that's expensive and most business owners won't need that service first let's take a look at the steps required for starting an llc on your own step one name your business before anything else you will have to think of the llc's legal business name each llc in south carolina must have a distinct llc name that is not currently in use you must include the terms limited liability company or an abbreviation such as llc you cannot include phrases such as a corporation which would lead people to believe you are a different business organization knowing if your business name is taken or not is very easy just go to google and type in the words business entity records south carolina secretary of state and click the first search result i also have the link in the description below for your convenience it will lead you to a landing page of business entity records in south carolina scroll down a little and you will see some search options which make checking the availability of your business name easier generally you can click the first option entity name and type in your business name for example i am typing a very common business name here laundry mart which will give you a list of existing business names a unique business name will say no matches found just like this random name i typed in keep in mind that the division of revenue doesn't check names for trademark compliance it's ultimately up to you and your business attorney to ensure that your llc's name doesn't infringe on any other company's rights step 2 south carolina requires llc to have a registered agent an agent has a physical address a po box is not allowed and is available during business hours this agent will serve as the llc's primary point of contact for receiving key legal papers tax warnings summons subpoenas and so on you can register yourself or someone in your company but i highly recommend getting a professional registered agent as they have more knowledge by protecting your company in cases of possible cracks while i agree that family members or friends are reliable enough to be trusted as your llc's agent you are more comfortable sleeping at night knowing that your agent is professional and trained to manage legal documents to avoid problems concerning court schedules filing reports with the secretary of state etc besides hiring a professional registered agent is not expensive in fact there are companies that offer a free registered agent as part of your package when you form your llc through them inc file is a company i recommend which has this free service inc file offers a free registered agent on your first year of signing up for their service during that free year you can already take advantage of a professional and trained agent to receive legal documents on your behalf a dashboard where you can always access the correspondence that your agent has received as well as email notifications and automatic forwarding whenever your registered agent receives documents step 3 filing the south carolina llc certificate of formation after that you must file the certificate of formation with the south carolina secretary of state's business entities division and the office of the judge of probate to officially incorporate a domestic south carolina limited liability company the total south carolina state filing cost for llcs is one hundred and ten dollars for both domestic llc's and foreign llcs basically a domestic llc means that you are already a resident of south carolina and you want to build a business in south carolina foreign llc on the other hand is for people living outside south carolina but wanting to start a business or a franchise of their business in south carolina with that said most businesses would be applying for a domestic llc you can file the certificate of formation online or by mailing it to the secretary of state expect the llc certification process to take approximately two weeks step four prepare an operating agreement now an operating agreement is a good idea to have in place with the other members if your llc has more than one member although a limited liability company operating agreement is not necessary for south carolina your operating agreement should clarify how your company or business will handle big picture issues such as allocating earnings and losses and dissolving the company your operating agreement should also cover the transfer of membership interest profits or losses and distributions initial investments decision making powers voting rights and management and lastly dissolving the business step 5 obtain an ein an ein or employer identification number is a federal tax id issued by the irs your ein is used by them to readily identify your firm and tax filings all south carolina firms pay a business privilege tax and the state requires you to have an ein to file you may also be required to provide your ein when opening a bank account or applying for municipal permits or licenses obtaining an ein is a slightly longer process compared to their previous steps i'm sure you know anything to do with the irs is confusing first you have to have complete knowledge of your llc such as your company information managing member information business address business information company details and even critical information regarding vehicular assets and federal excise taxes this is another reason why getting a professional registered agent is way more convenient as they can do this for you as part of their service now let's talk about the second option to form an llc and that is hiring a professional formation service professional formation services do all the steps you should be doing on your own from filing necessary forms to acting as your registered agent you usually have to allocate a specific budget for this option as i already mentioned earlier inkfile is one of the best companies out there to help you form your llc you can click on the link in the description to get access to this deal inc file is one of a kind as it offers a free package with services such as preparing and filing your articles of organization well you still have to pay 237 dollars for the state fees which you would have to do anyway if you chose the diy
Thanks for your comment Claude Rafanan, have a nice day.
- Sherrell Carles, Staff Member
Comment by davidku1Q
in today's video we were talking about how to start an llc in south carolina my name is eric and in this video i'm going to walk you through three different ways that you can set up an llc but more importantly than that we're going to be talking about terms and things you must know as far as creating a legit llc and these terms are things such as piercing the corporate fail registered agents and co-mingling funds now if you're not sure what those terms are i'll be explaining them throughout this video and it's really important to stay on through the end of the video because all these things are going to make sure that you have a legit llc that is doing what you want it to do for your business so why don't we get started with a google search here so if you go to south carolina llc the first thing that's going to show up is the state website now they do have the downloadable paper forms but they're kind of pushing people to file online and that's usually the best way to go this is a good time to mention that any links or resources mentioned in this video will be in the description below most of those are free resources if it is an affiliate link i will mark it as a paid link but i appreciate you using my links because it helps support my youtube channel so let's get back to the review so what you do is you click this link and then the next thing you'd have to do is actually sign up for an account i have already done that and what i'm going to do is quickly walk you through the steps of this service and this is the first way that i would suggest is going through the state website the advantages of it is that there tends to be uh the lowest possible price for getting set up but sometimes there's some hidden fees that you may not be considering and we're gonna be talking about that as well um a disadvantage too though is sometimes it's a little clunkier going through a state website this one is not too bad to be honest but the first thing you're gonna need to do is search for your business name now charleston if i think it's the river dogs is that the uh the aaa team i think it's called if you were to search for things that are already established um you can see dissolved good standing river dog shop but this would be an example like if you wanted to be the river dog shop you don't want that name because it's already taken but if you put in something crazy and you just go like this and you do a search what it's going to say is that there are no results found so this name is available so that's the first step is finding a name that is unique in the state of south carolina that is going to work for your business so then once you're actually set up and you log in uh you would log in through the uh button up here so once you create an account which you can do in the upper right hand corner so what you're going to do is click on start a new business filing and then you'd have your name whatever used before add new entity type and then what we're going to do at this point is you're going to select a limited liability company and then start filing articles of organization and i've already filled out some of the information here and one of the things that i do want to do is i want to walk you through some of the details here so so this one's really important and it's talking about your agent's name and you may not be familiar with this the term registered agent that we mentioned at the beginning of this video and it's really important to have a solid registered agent for your llc because it's going to make sure that your llc is legit so to better understand registered agents i think it's good to take a step back and explain llc's really quickly so then we can work from there when you have an llc it's not for tax advantages or anything like that it's strictly for limiting your liability when you set up an llc the reason you're doing it is you have your business assets so you know you have your office and different things you're starting to accrue in your business but then you also have your personal assets so personal assets can be things like your personal home personal car personal bank accounts what the llc does is it draws a division between these two assets and that division is known as the corporate veil now what that does is if you were to be sued by somebody what that attorney is going to do is they're going to try to come after your business assets but if they can do what's called piercing the corporate veil basically finding a crack in your llc they'll be able to come after your personal assets as well so that's what piercing the corporate bill means that's a term it's kind of legal jargon is when they come after your personal assets as well because they found a crack in your llc so this is a nice article from inkfile on registered agents if you're not familiar with inkfile it is a online legal tool that helps you set up llcs but in this particular article they kind of cover what a registered agent is basically it's a third party that's going to forward you important mail make sure that you're dotting your eyes crossing your t's and staying up to date with your llc these five sections right here explain in better detail official letters and correspondence from your secretary of state uh service of process notices so if you were to be sued to make sure that you appear in court uh official federal government correspondence information and notifications tax forms and requests for payment and request to complete permits company filings or reports so that is pretty much in a nutshell what a registered agent does for your business the reason i mention this is sometimes you're going through uh some of these tools and it just says what's your agent's name i'm gonna put an llc right there just so that will go away uh but it doesn't tell you exactly what that agent is doing for your business and the mistake people make is they go oh i think the person has to be in my state so i'll just get my buddy down the street to do this for me and he's gonna be my registered agent well if that person isn't doing all the proper things that are listed here for your business there's a good chance that they're actually creating a crack and they're making it so that if you were to be sued that the attorney suing you can pierce the corporate bill and come after not only your business assets but your personal assets as well so that is why a registered agent is so important to your business so what i recommend for a lot of people is this service inc file and the reason for that is they have been around since 2004 they have launched 500 000 businesses but if you scroll down here it says business formation for as little as zero dollars plus state fee so you might be wondering like how do they charge zero dollars and then just the state fee so i'm going to cover that right now if you're to go through this tool you'd select llc your state of formation so you're at south carolina and then it's going to give you three packages in the silver package the package fee is zero dollars and their state fee is 150. so that is what is charged for a new business entity the amount i
Thanks davidku1Q your participation is very much appreciated
- Sherrell Carles
About the author
Sherrell Carles
I've studied admiralty law at Purdue University in West Lafayette and I am an expert in hydroponics. I usually feel irritated. My previous job was military officer I held this position for 8 years, I love talking about watching television and pok+¬mon cards / go. Huge fan of RuPaul I practice formula 1 and collect cards.
