Q:

Subject: c corporation question

I am utilizing the information that you provide as a guideline to set up my C Corporation. Are you saying to use Corporation or Inc., etc. in the name? It sounded like you are saying to avoid these words.

Thanks very much.

Regarding the selection of a name for a corp, you seem to be misunderstanding the point I was trying to make.

I have never had any problem with the use of a corp signifier in the official name, such as Corporation, Inc, or Ltd. In fact, most states require one of these to be used as part of their chartering.

What I have long seen as a bad choice was to have the owners' personal names as part of the corp name. Too often, people just put Inc or Corp after their own names.

One of the many benefits of working with a corp entity is the ability to have more privacy and anonymity than you would have by using your own personal name. As we all know, in this day and age there are fewer and fewer aspects of our personal and business lives that we can keep private. This is why I have aways liked the idea of using a generic non-descriptive name for the official corp filing. I have seen people use a few initials, parts of their kids' or grandkids' names and even completely made-up words for their official corp names. It doesn't matter that nobody can understand the meaning of the corp name. It's nobody else's business.

Even with the generic non-descriptive official corp name, you can still also lock in some DBAs to show to the public if that would be helpful for conducting your business operations. Behind the scenes tasks, such as buying and selling properties and filing tax returns, would be under the generic official corp name. This makes snooping on your confidential affairs more difficult with Google and other tools at everyone's disposal nowadays.

I hope this helps you better understand my feelings on naming corporations.

Good luck.

Kerry Kerstetter

Kerry,
I am sorry. I did misunderstand. Thanks so much for the clarification. I look forward to working with you in the future.

Labels: corp

- posted by Kerry M. Kerstetter, MBA~CPA~ATP~ATA @ 8/13/2009 10:20:00 AM Send this post: