> pay the $800 annual fee whether or not you have any income
Really? In the 2 states I've lived in, there is no annual fee for LLC's. I'm curious what the reasoning behind having a fee that large is.
Really? In the 2 states I've lived in, there is no annual fee for LLC's. I'm curious what the reasoning behind having a fee that large is.
But if you don't pay your LLC just goes defunct. Making it a mandatory fee you can't escape kind of flies in the face of the whole point of an llc
See also:
"To get people to move to Texas and create CA's regulatory environment there."
shows some 9 states with no annual fee.
The fee is just one small part of a litany of compliance hurdles. The purpose is to keep the small guy under the table so that he can be squashed like a bug (by a lawsuit and/or the gov itself) if he F's up.
I'm sure they have some grandiose "think of the children"-esque language they do to justify it but as someone who lives in a similar regulatory environment the practical effect is that businesses either start with lots of investment[1] or they stay as under the table as they can possibly be.[2]
[1] either capital investment, like a facility and fleet of trucks, or time investment in the status quo, for example by a white collar professional (like a PE, lawyer or accountant) spending years working under some other business and building a reputation before striking out on their own or a tradesmen getting a professional license that requires years in a field. Sometimes there's a hybrid approach where you do your 9-5 for someone who's already made the investment and do side gigs to build up a customer base and then at some point you "go legit" and start your own business.
[2] And they either stay small or try and slowly amass the capital to start an above the table business.