Business Licenses

[hobbsie]

My cousin inherited a small family run store in the New England area- previous owner passed away suddenly. It’s a show store that specializes in sports wear and sneakers. He has little or no previous business experience and is out of his depth. Let’s just say he didn’t see this one coming.

Quick question about business licenses. Does a brick and mortar store that sells foot wear nee any kind of a business license? It’s not easy trying to find out what you need. Different people offering different advice. The business is located in Massachusetts and doesn’t seem to have a very healthy record in terms of compliance and paperwork.

 

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[Johnny boy]

https://www.sec.state.ma.us/seccon.htm

call and ask the people who's job it is to know.

Ask for names and numbers, be polite, assume nothing, ask tons of questions, ask multiple people the same question, go in person and ask, make it a point to learn as much as possible, and then thank people for taking the time to help you. They will be much more willing to spend a long time helping you.

When I started my company I fried my brain trying to figure it out myself, it's explained so poorly online, just go in and talk to people that can answer questions for your situation.

When I did it, I was kind, persistent, and a bit annoying, but made up for it with a lot of thank you's. It worked and everything was explained to me about payroll, licensing, websites to register on, taxes and filing dates and procedures, etc.

 

[hobbsie]

Thanks Johnny boy, much appreciated!!

That list of contacts for the Massachusetts Secretary of State is a great first point of contact. They are the deciding authority after all.

I find it incredible that the paperwork and license requirements for a small business are not more clearly laid out in this day and age. The whole thing is so ambiguous. And for something that has such significant legal implications you think there would be an easy-to-follow framework available to guide small business owners through the process.

I’ve been doing a little research online surrounding license requirements. The advice varies from one source to another but there’s a pretty good post about it here business license for llc companies. But at the end of the day, you need to hear it from the horse's mouth… the MA secretary of state.

I Like your advice - polite persistence. Just keep getting in touch. Ask lots of questions. Rinse and repeat until you feel you have all you need. And most importantly be polite to stay in their good books. No point in falling out when you need their help and guidance. No matter how frustrating it may be. Small business owners should be getting all the help they need when it comes to clarification on state requirements.

 

[Mikkel]

@Johnny boy is spot on here. I'll add one small point.

If there are still unanswered questions, make sure you ask them for other suggested people or departments to contact. You don't want to leave one of those meetings with you not know what to do next.

 

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[Johnny boy]

Would be a great opportunity for someone to spend a lot of time and put together an extremely well done course on creating a company in each state like with a checklist and who to contact and what to do exactly with explanations.

I form companies way differently than before.

Now it’s

1. Parent company created in Delaware with registered agent service to hide identity and address from public. (Buy domain beforehand, use GSuite for the email but have it setup on company domain, get official email address ‘admin@domain.com’
2. Once formed that company owns any other entities I form after that which actually do business.
3. Use registered agent for everything, pay for a mailbox service but something legit enough to be used for bank, “domicile address”, IRS, etc. nothing at my house. Coworking spaces that aren’t registered as mail agents can work.
4. Get EIN, bank account, register with state for taxes, payroll stuff, etc. for everything you use the business address that isn’t your damn house, and logins are with business email “admin”.
5. Put initial sum of cash in accounts and never mix business with personal; use same bank for multiple businesses since we have multiple locations and LLC’s. Before spending anything get setup with accounting software and have bookkeeper organize the books and chart of accounts before doing anything.
6. Individual LLC’s make a profit and those profits pass through to the parent company of all of them, which is an S-Corp so I can be employed with one job as a manager so when I pay myself instead of getting a 15.3% payroll tax to all income I pay that payroll tax on a small percentage and take the rest of the chunk as a distribution so there’s little payroll tax.
7. Bonus points if your company makes little profit because it’s paying expensive “licensing fees” to a corporation in the caymans which buys assets and leases them to you.

You want to limit liability, reduce taxes, protect from people finding your house and real name when you can, have a designated address that you likely won’t have to change if you want to move, and keep things organized.

I have info of my entities in my notion account to keep them organized. Since we are franchising we will need to keep track of many of them and everything needs to be easy to find and put in sub folders. Passwords and logins will have an encrypted storage option like Bitwarden.

Properly organizing and forming a business is on a different level than just ‘starting’ a business.

Keep in mind when I started I was almost too retarded to do even the basics of it and get anything registered at all. This was in 2018 when I was 21.

Business is like having a kid except it does the opposite to your time and money.