Foreign Corporation Registration

We do, and have a lot of ability to help you. First, if you’re wondering whether your company would be considered a “reporting company” for FinCEN reporting purposes, or you want to know who are your company’s Beneficial Owners, try out our FREE, anonymous expert system to help answer these questions. It’s available here.

We have BOIR (which stands for Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting, or BOIR) as an option. We can do it, for a nominal fee, or you can do it.

Finally, we offer outstanding, best-in-class, BOI compliance tools to help you understand when you need to submit updated reports. We’ll keep track of important deadlines, and be ready to answer your questions.

We receive this question a lot, despite our attempt to be price competitive with “the rest”. It seems every time we lower our price, the competition lowers theirs even further.

At the end of the day, we’re an actual law firm. Your questions are answered by licensed and trained professionals. We are able to extend attorney-client privilege and confidentiality to our clients. Our business/activities is/are governed by the professional rules of conduct for each state we’re licensed in, and we carry professional liability insurance. We have licensed professionals dealing with the registered agent’s office.

Regularly, we fend off private investigators, police investigators and more. Our people have the training to maximize the legal protections available to our clients.

So, we’re not the cheapest game in town. The “other guys” are trying to sell registration, we’re trying to sell relationships. There are many things we won’t do that the “other guys” will do, because we’re worried about our clients’ long-term success and we’re concerned with minimizing our clients’ long-term liability.

We can provide a range of services for our clients, where registering the Foreign Corporation is just the first step. This includes contracts, switching ownership of real property, resolving disputes, trademarks, and much, much more. You can do things things with this firm, relying on our training, experience, professionalism and confidentiality.

If you’re considering a cheaper option, ask yourself the following questions first:

• How critical is privacy, and do I want the maximum protection available?
• Do I want the ability to obtain sound legal advice?
• Do I care about whether things are setup properly?
• Is liability protection important, and do I want to minimize the ability for someone to “pierce the corporate veil” of my Corporation?
• Do I care whether the folks I hire are trained professionals?
• Do I care whether I can hold the company accountable for misguiding, or otherwise committing errors with my Foreign Corporation?
• Do the “other guys” not disclose who they actually are, making it difficult to know whether their claims are actually true or they actually have the experience they claim to have?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above, you may want to think twice before hiring the “other guys”.

No, it is not.

Think of a “Foreign Corporation” as sort of like dual citizenship: You have two passports from two different countries, indicating that you are a citizen of two countries. You’re still one person. One social security number (at least from the US).

A Foreign Corporation is very similar: It’s one company that is registered in two or more states, so that it is lawful to conduct business in those states.

Depending on the tax status of your company, it could complicate taxes. For example, if your Corporation is taxed as a C-Corp, them you will need to apportion your company’s revenues between the various states its registered, and submit appropriate state tax income returns. Please consult with a tax professional to better understand how this works.

No, you do not.

But, it’s very hard to answer which states you do need to register your company in.

Our advice is as follows: You should be registering your company in each state that you’re lawfully “conducting business in”, as each state individually defines “conducting business” in their state.

It’s really hard to give you a set of rules for all states. What we can say is, if you’re “purposefully availing yourself” of a state, you’re doing business in the state. What is “purposefully availing yourself?” If you have a base operations in a state, that’s probably “purposefully availing yourself.” So would having W2 employees in a state. And, singling out a state for marketing purposes. Another general rule is, if 25% or more of your income is coming from one particular state, then you’re probably doing business in that state.

Each company is different, though, and just because you’re a consultant and a big client is in a state for 6 months, then you’re off to another state, probably doesn’t rise to the level of “conducting business in” a state. You really need to consult with a locally licensed business attorney to help you understand what a specific state’s requirements are, and whether your business falls within those requirements.

All we can do at L4SB, is provide general guidance in this specific instance.