Business registration - why/when

Lesson Details:

Video Transcription – In this video let's go over the basics of your business registration we're gonna talk about why you should do it when you should do it and how to do it the only difference is that in every country of the world it's a slightly different process not only that even if you are in the u.s. in every state of the US it's a slightly different process so it's tricky what we're gonna talk about is United States because that's where the bulk of the audience is gonna come from and if you're not in the United States it's okay in your country it's probably very similar so just bear with me the examples gonna be on US but you probably can use most of this for wherever you are so what is the business registration give you it gives you liability protection and it changes your taxation issues let me talk about that a little bit first of all liability issues are legal issues I'm not qualified to advise on that taxation issues are accounting issues I'm not qualified to advise on that so I usually just say I cannot advise you on this so the only thing I can do is give you the very basics so what's liability protection let's say you have not registered your business what happens is in case somebody Sue's you they're going to be suing you for your personal assets because the business is your personal asset it's part of your personal finances the benefit of registration for your business is that you're they can only sue your business not you so you're going to be personally protected it's going to give you that liability personal liability protection that's one benefit another issue of course is your taxes are totally going to change so when you are thinking of should I register my business how you need to talk to a lawyer in addition to this video obviously after this video to make a serious decision you need to talk to a lawyer and an accountant to see how registering your business will change your finances when you register your business there's different types of businesses again in the u.s. you can be LLC C Corp S Corp some combination of others and a lawyer will tell you what's ideal for your situation and the accountant will tell you which tack which like lab which business entities are ideal for your situation in terms of tax so you can get that that advice from them a person like myself cannot really advise you on these issues now when and why should you do this you can actually stay in business as yourself let's say for example you made a mobile app do you really need to register at that as a business it's a question it's questionable because it's gonna cost you some money it's gonna some time most likely you'll never get sued and not saying anything about your app but most apps they don't really grow big in the end obviously you have all the hopes in the world for your apps but most apps just don't and so it never becomes an issue it never becomes like no but it's competing with you know but it's doing your intellectual property nobody's doing any of that so really you're never gonna have these litigation issues there's never gonna be lawsuits it's gonna be a little app you just made it some people used it great done so do you need to register a business for that sort of thing usually not really how do you know well if the app starts taking off you're getting thousands tens of thousands of users they're paying then yeah it becomes much more likely that you should get you know registered this consider the taxes all that but again don't take my advice for it this is just an overview the real advice is should be from an accountant and a lawyer so I cannot advise on this how do you register it's actually pretty simple if you did decide to register your company you can pay a lawyer they're going to take it literally takes not a very long time what the lawyer gonna do is they're gonna do the exact same thing as you're gonna do online and they're gonna go online and they're gonna register your business but they're gonna charge you a little bit of a fee for doing it and depending on the lawyer that little bit of a fee can be a lot of a fee but it really can take like half an hour of your time what you need to do is you need to find every state in the United States has something called the Secretary of State Office you google secretary of state office for your state go on their website usually have a area for Business Administration and as long as you know all the things you need to enter that kind of business you want all that stuff then you can just do it yourself when I did it it took a like a 13 it was like a 30 minute online form that I filled out and then there were some requirements from the state that I had to do after that and that's it my business was filed.