HP and Yahoo have teamed up to send you advertisements on your fax machine. With access to your IP address, they will be able to identify your area and target you with a local advertisement (see computer world).
That’s a double bonus for HP. They get money from:
1. The advertisement
2. Increase ink usage
As big business becomes more and more unreasonable, small companies that respect consumers can only become more competitive.
1. Pick a name
The name of your LLC really doesn’t matter. You might change the name of your website — we’ve already changed once. So, we picked something innocuous and called ourselves JN Projects (for Joseph Nate Projects). That way we can continue to use the LLC for other projects we might do together.
2. Check the availability of your name
Do an online search at the Minnesota Secretary of State:
http://da.sos.state.mn.us/minnesota/corp_inquiry-find.asp?:Norder_item_type_id=9
3. Register it online
There’s a $170 filing fee, plus $10 if you want to do it online. Otherwise, you have to drop it off at the Minnesota Secreatary of State Office. Here is their Express Service:
http://expressservices.sos.state.mn.us/
4. Filling out the form: Expiration date?
LLCs can have an expiration date. What you should know before selecting this option is that the LLC will naturally expire if it is not renewed each year.
5. Annual Renew
Don’t forget to renew your LLC each year. Otherwise, your LLC will expire:
https://online.sos.state.mn.us/abr/corp_annual_filing.asp
6. Get an Employer Identification Number
It is a Federal Tax Identification number. When we do business with other companies, they oftentimes require an EIN or Social Security Number. We didn’t want to give out our personal SSN for business relationships, purchases and liability. So, getting an EIN made sense for us. Here’s more information from the IRS on whether you need an EIN:
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98350,00.html
If it makes sense for you, you can apply for it online:
https://sa2.www4.irs.gov/modiein/individual/index.jsp
7. You’re done. Government can be fast.
The IRS will immediately give you an EIN at the completion of the application and the Minnesota Secretary of State can approve your application as soon as the next day.
