LLC
California Secretary of State Fees for an LLC:
Filing of Articles of Organization $5 with Certified Copy
Filing of Statement of Information $25.00 with a Certified copy
Certificate of Good Standing: $5.00
(We can incorporate your LLC in most States. Filing fees vary State to State)
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Binder (Optional): $75.00
(Colors: Black, Burgundy, Pink, Green, Blue)
LLC Seal LLC and Membership certificates
Document Preparation Fee $300
All business formations come with EIN (Tax Identification number)
Generic Operating Agreement
First year of Agent service free (after 1 year the fee is $75 annually)
*We offer customized Operating Agreements or Partnership Agreements for an additional fee*
S-Corp Election Filing additional $50 (Optional)
One major advantage of an S corporation is that it provides owners limited liability protection,
regardless of its tax status. Limited liability protection means that the owners' personal assets are
shielded from the claims of business creditors—whether the claims arise from contracts or litigation.
Duns Number $75 (Optional)
Why Do You Need a DUNS Number? You need a DUNS number because it is required for
receiving your business credit report from Dun & Bradstreet and for applying for any grants or
cooperatives from the federal government.
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Mandatory BOI (Beneficial Ownership Information) $45
What is the BOI?
Beneficial ownership information (BOI) reporting, as required by the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), became effective on January 1, 2024. Many companies are required to report information to FinCEN about the individuals who ultimately own or control them. Beginning January 1, 2024, new businesses will be required to report their beneficial owner information (BOI) electronically to FinCEN. For existing businesses that were registered prior to January 1, 2024, they will have until January 1, 2025 to complete their BOI registration.
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Whether you need to set up a LLC we take care of everything to form your new business entity.
From start to finish, JLS Consulting Services handles the following aspects of your corporation formation.
After reserving your new corporate name, we will prepare the Articles of Incorporation file them with the California Secretary of State. After the Articles or Agreement have been filed we will prepare the corporate bylaws and the corporate minutes which will be completed at the first corporate meeting, at which time the officers are appointed, the bylaws accepted and the corporate seal and stock certificates are given.
Your first Statement of Information is always included.
Best of all, your corporate documents will be presented to you in a leather binder embossed with the
corporation’s name and complete with a corporate seal. That’s full service corporation formation.
How to Pay Yourself with your LLC
The two most common options are to treat yourself as an employee with wages, or to treat yourself as an LLC
member and receive distribution from the profits. Earn Wages as an Employee.
Paying yourself from an LLC as an employee allows you to receive regular compensation that you can plan on
throughout the year, which can be very helpful if you are seeking a regular income. To be able to pay yourself wages or a salary from your single member LLC or other LLC, you must be actively working in the business.
You need to have an actual role with real responsibilities as an LLC owner. Where there are multiple owners, if all of the LLC members participate equally in the operation of the business, you can't pay one a salary and not the others. However, if you are the only member that has a management role, you can pay yourself a salary without setting up salaries for the other participating LLC members. Employee wages are considered operating expenses for the LLC and will be deducted from the LLC's profits. The IRS only allows reasonable wages as a deduction, so be sure any salary you pay yourself is within industry norms. You can also issue bonuses to LLC members who are employees, including yourself. Again, these must be reasonable related to the salary being paid. You'll need to file IRS Form W-4 to determine the amount of payroll withholding from each paycheck you receive. The LLC will pay you as a W-2 employee and will withhold income and employment taxes from your paycheck. You will pay income tax on your wages earned.
Receive Distributions from LLC Profits
Another option for how to pay yourself in an LLC is to receive distributions of profits from the LLC each year. Each
member owns a percentage of the LLC, called his or her capital account. Year-end profit distributions are made
based on that percentage. So if the LLC had $100,000 in profit and you and the other member each own 50%, you
can each receive $50,000.
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If you expect your percentage of the year-end profit to be $12,000, you could set up a draw to receive $1,000 each
month. The total of all the draws throughout the year are deducted from the total year-end profit. So if your draw for the year totaled $12,000, but your share of the profit ends up being $15,000, then you would receive $3,000 at the end of the year.
If you are the only member of the LLC, you will pay income tax on your distributions and you will file Schedule C to report the profits and losses of the LLC with your personal tax return. If there is more than one member, the IRS treats the LLC as a partnership and you each report your share of the profit and pay income tax on that. The LLC will file IRS Form 1065 to report how profits are divided among the members.
It's important to note that receiving a salary and receiving year-end distributions are not mutually exclusive. If you get a paycheck, you're still a member of the LLC and entitled to your year-end distribution.
Work as an Independent Contractor
You may be thinking, are these the only options for paying myself from my LLC? A third option for LLC paying yourself is to hire yourself as an independent contractor, doing work for the LLC.
Here is an example: If you are a member of an LLC that prints signs, you can hire yourself as an
independent contractor to do the graphic design for the signs. This type of arrangement may not offer as many benefits, though. If you choose to pay yourself as a contractor, you need to file IRS Form W-9 with the LLC and the LLC will file an IRS Form 1099-MISC at the end of the year. You will be responsible for paying self-employment taxes on the amount earned.
Choose Not to Receive Payments
You also have the option to not pay yourself anything and to leave the profits in the LLC. You still will need to pay
income tax on the profit earned, since the profits from your LLC pass through to your personal tax return.
Ready to start your LLC?
Contact us at one of the following locutions to schedule an appointment:
Los Angeles County (310) 348-7218
Riverside County (951) 703-9043
Because we are not lawyers, we cannot offer legal advice or represent you in court, assist you with the selection of forms. We can only prepare legal forms, provide general published factual information written and approved by an attorney and file and serve legal forms and documents as you specifically direct. If you need legal advise or representation in court we can refer you to an attorney, within our network. Our focus is to provide local legal services to the public and attorneys in the area. We strive to simplify the difficulty of legal documents for you. We take care of the document preparation so that you know the documents are completed properly from the start.