Filing Services

If you are located outside the United States and want to start a USA company, you can do so by satisfying a few basic requirements.

First you will need to decide which type of company (also known as an entity) will best suit your business needs. If you incorporate in the USA, you will be forming a Corporation. If you form an LLC, you will be forming a Limited Liability Company (LLC). Each entity has its advantages and there is no restriction on which country the owners are from or how many owners there are. However, your home country might have its own restrictions on which type of entity can operate in that country so you will need to check your local laws and possibly contact an attorney for more information.

Once you’ve decided whether to incorporate in the US or form an LLC, you will need to decide the state where you will start a USA company. You can choose any of the 50 states or Washington, D.C. The state you choose will depend on why you are starting the company. Some states like Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming are more “business-friendly” and “international-friendly” than other states, and if you are only starting a US company because you need to open a US bank account and will not have a physical office, you might want to choose one of these states. In fact, the banks in Delaware, Nevada and Wyoming are familiar with international clients who don’t have a local office and dealing with them will most likely be easiest. If you are opening a US office when you start a USA company, you might want to incorporate or form an LLC in the state where you will open an office or operate with a home-based employee. You can still form the company in another state like Delaware if you like, but please note that you will need to “re-register” the company in your state of operation and will have to pay additional fees – this is called a “foreign qualification” and we can handle this for you as well.

After you’ve decided to incorporate or form an LLC, and chosen the state where you will start the company, you will need to choose a company name and provide a registered agent. A registered agent must be a person or company that has a physical address in your state of formation, is available during business hours and agrees to accept and sign for official legal and state documents on behalf of your company. MyNewCompany.com can provide the registered agent in any state for $99/year. Please note that in addition to your registered agent name and address, some states will require you to provide the names and addresses of your company owners and any people involved with the company such as directors or shareholders. Also, it should be noted that a registered agent is not a mail forwarding service.

There might be some additional items you will need to complete before you can legally operate your company in the United States such as setting up a physical or virtual office and obtaining a Federal Tax ID, but completing these basic steps gets you started. By choosing to incorporate in the USA or form an LLC, you have added credibility to your company and can now put your services or products in front of US investors and the US market. These are just some of the reasons to start a USA company.

For more information, please view our resource page with step-by-step instructions: “How to Start a Company in the USA“.

Incorporate, Form an LLC or File a DBA and save 15% NOW!

To receive this discount:

1. Place an order for a Corporation or an LLC.
2. On the final step of checkout, click the “Offer Code” link, enter offer code 15NOW.
3. Make sure to click “Apply” and 15% will automatically be deducted from your total.
4. Submit your order.

This is a one-time tax-season special so please act now!

IMPORTANT: the offer code must be applied before submitting an order and is not applicable to orders after they are submitted.

Some incorporation and LLC formation companies have recently been advertising that they will “incorporate your business for free” or “form your LLC for free”! Of course, most sensible people know that not only is this not true, they know that no business that wishes to remain in business would offer their services for free – even in our current economy. After being contacted by a few people who were taken in by this scam (and us having to clean up a few messes left by some inexperienced competitors), I thought I would investigate further.

So let’s take a closer look at these “incorporate for free” and “form an LLC for free” offers. After reviewing a few sites that are offering this, I found:

• Obviously this does not include state fees or publication fees. State fees can range from $20 to over $500. These companies conveniently don’t mention this in their advertising (except as a disclaimer).
• Most are embedding significant fees within the state fee. For example, the state fee in California is $70 for an LLC and $100 for a corporation – most I checked were charging anywhere from $85 to $115 for the LLC and $115 to $140 for the corporation. This is simply dishonest.
• They are all going to attempt to upsell you – they wouldn’t offer this without the potential to get actual money from you. Get ready for aggressive sales calls, emails and attempts to get you to buy things you don’t need (for example, a professional Registered Agent Service is not required if you live in the state where you form the company and are available during business hours). I would bet that most people who form a “free” company end up paying more than people who go with a company that tells the truth, is upfront and charges reasonable fees.
• None of them offered personalized Corporation Bylaws or an LLC Operating Agreement. Not having these documents is dangerous, exposing you to lawsuits, owner disputes and general lack of proper organization.
• Most are charging outrageous shipping fees which are conveniently not included in the “free” package. $29.95 for “Priority Mail” in one case. Priority Mail from the USPS is usually around $5 for corporate documents.
• Most are charging really outrageous “Rush” or “Expedite” fees. Some are $150 or more when I know for a fact that all they are doing is overnighting the documents to and from the state (typically around $50 – $60 in real costs).

So what’s the alternative? Obviously this article is written to convince you to try our services. We believe in being honest and here’s what we’ll offer you:

• Our service starts at only $79 + state fees.
• We only charge the real state fee which you can view on our online order forms.
• We never attempt to upsell you.
• Even our basic service includes personalized Corporate Bylaws or an LLC Operating Agreement.
• Shipping is always free, you can add overnight for $25.
• We don’t make money on “Rush” or “Expedite” fees. If it costs $25 to expedite a filing with the state, that’s what we charge you.
• Most importantly, we tell the truth. We would never offer a “free corporation” or “free LLC” as a sales tactic. We would never hide fees in the state fee. We never say “incorporate in 10 minutes” or other gimmicks – we tell you how long it will take to form your company right on Step 1 of our order forms.

I invite you to compare us to our competitors and decide for yourself.

In news that should be terrifying to most US states’ technology administrators, Rwanda (yes, that Rwanda) now has an online business registration system that is faster and easier than most US states. This system allows a person to form a company in Rwanda in 1 hour.

Compare this to the standard processing time of select US Secretary of States (as of June 2010):

• California Secretary of State: 70 Days
• Maryland Department of State: 75 Days
• Nevada Secretary of State: 45 Days
• New York Secretary of State: 20 Days
• Washington D.C. DCRA: 40 Days

So if you want to file a DBA, incorporate a business or form an LLC in the United States, you will almost certainly have to wait longer than your entrepreneurial equivalent in Rwanda. This should be a wake up call to each US Secretary of State’s filing office: in the largest, most powerful economy in the world, we are now falling behind 3rd world countries (recovering from a brutal civil war) in the time it takes to register a business.

The number of new business registrations is an important indicator of the overall health of an economy and US State governments should make upgrading their systems a priority not only to make business startups faster, but to improve and streamline the internal operations of their own offices.

Many entrepreneurs and startups are very concerned when they go to start their company because they’re not sure what type of business entity (Corporation, S-Corporation, LLC, etc.) a venture capitalist (VC) would want their company to be formed as, which state they should incorporate in and the types and number of shares.

However, many entrepreneurs and startup advisors believe that this should not be the primary concern. For example, if you incorporate in California when you start out, you can then “re-incorporate” in Delaware later should your investors require this. Or if you don’t authorize enough shares, then you can amend your original articles of incorporation later to reflect more shares, or different classes of shares (common shares vs. preferred shares).

There may be an exception in regards to the LLC – sometimes this entity is more difficult to modify for a venture capitalists needs – VC’s almost always prefer to work with the C-Corporation.

So, in essence, many companies start out in one structure, based in one state and eventually end up being changed considerably later. Instead, it might be advisable to work on working on your product or service, getting the company going in whatever form and then worry about these corporate formalities later – if you are at the point where they are modifying your company, you will probably receiving significant funding and these formalities will be handled by seasoned lawyers.

If you want to do the Delaware option at startup, see how a lawyer would set up a Delaware company now if were a startup. Almost always this is a Delaware C-Corporation.

If you’d like to see some of the typical venture capital agreements or how they typically modify the articles of incorporation, then view these “Model Series Seed Agreements“. This includes documents like Investors Rights and a “Term Sheet”.

Long story short, it’s ultimately up to you how you want to structure your company in the beginning, but the links mentioned above will show how a VC or startup lawyer might eventually structure your corporation.