Form a Minnesota LLC Or Incorporate Your Business
If you have ever flown over, or simply looked at a detailed map of Minnesota, you'll quickly know how it got it's nickname. It is ridiculous how many lakes, ponds, water holes the countryside has. Right? This is the land of 10,000 lakes. But really is it more than 10,000 lakes? Yes, in fact there are almost 12,000 lakes!!! We'll the amount of water in this state doesn't deter it from being a great place to live, work and thrive with a business. Target, a major retailer is located in Minnesota, and the largest shopping mall in the country is also located here. On this page we'll talk about how to form an LLC in Minnesota or Incorporate in Minnesota. The business climate here is friendly and offers great ways to setup your business, get tax benefits, and protect your assets.
Form a Minnesota LLC
The limited liability company, or LLC, is a great way that you can form a business and protect assets. The LLC will give the owners limited liability protection once their LLC is setup, and if they operated it as a separate and distinct entity. You must also follow all laws and regulation and statutes related to your entity type in Minnesota. Once you have limited liability protection, your business and personal assets will be consider separate. If you were to get sued by a creditor or customer, they would be suing your LLC and not you personally.
Another great benefit of the LLC is that of pass through taxation. This is where the income earned by the LLC is pass through to the members tax returns directly. This is a good benefit in that it helps avoid double taxation.
How to Name a Minnesota LLC
The naming process for a Minnesota LLC is a little bit hard, but you can simplify it with our tips and help. The company name MUST include the words Limited Liability Company or abbreviation LLC, and may not include the words corporation” or “incorporated” or their abbreviations. The name must include any reserved words like "Bank" or "Banc" or other words from certain regulated industries. You can do a preliminary name search for a Minnesota LLC Name here.
Incorporate in Minnesota
The State of Minnesota is a great place to setup a Corporation. There is a very defined process that must be followed to setup a corporation in Minnesota. Here are a few of the benefits of the Corporate Structure:
- You get limited liability protection - this keeps a separation between your personal assets and business assets. It can save you money in event of a lawsuit, if you've operated the business correctly.
- Option of two corporation types:
C corporation : This is a stand alone entity responsible for their own taxes.
S corporation : This is a pass through entity that can help you to avoid double taxation for your business.
- You can issue shares and sell shares to new shareholders. The company can define the right and obligations for share ownership.
Finding a Good Name for your Corporation
You will need to make sure that your corporation has a proper ending identifier for your business. Corporations MUST choose one of the following words or abbreviation of these words as part of the name of the business: “Incorporated”; “Corporation”; “Limited”; or “Company”. Note: The word “company” cannot be immediately preceded by “and” or “&”. You should also avoid using any reserved words such as "Bank" or "Banc" or anything that might misrepresent what you business purpose is. Typically reserved words are regulated by certain industries that are regulated by the government.
Minnesota Secretary of State Links:
