So, you have decided the structure in which you want to incorporate your business, but now how do you do it‽?? Incorporation of a business usually requires state government paperwork. Thankfully, there are some companies that help streamline the process for you. You pay them a nominal fee to make sure you don’t f&*% anything up. Here’s a short list of service providers we would recommend you consider.

• ZenBusiness – what Asterops used to incorporate, clean interface, easy to use, fast
• LegalZoom – similar to ZenBusiness, but supposedly cheaper, nice user interface
• Rocket Lawyer– I have used this for personal / professional legal contracts and found they have an plethora of templates available for use
• Firstbase – they have startup tools (financial, compliance, etc.) in addition to helping you incorporate your business

A Note on Incorporation in Delaware

If you are incorporating your company as a C corporation, almost everyone does it in Delaware.

Why?

The bottom line: Delaware is more lenient on taxes for companies. If a company is registered in Delaware, but does not do business in Delaware, they do not have to pay corporate income taxes. Delaware also does not have sales tax, investment income tax, inheritance tax, or personal property tax. Additionally, Delaware is fast to process incorporations (usually the same day) and has much speedier trials in their corporation courts. All this is to say, Delaware is probably where you will want to incorporate if you are becoming a C corporation.

Fun fact: 68% of Fortune 500 companies are Delaware C corporations.

– D

Source: Forbes