The US Forms: Sole Prop to Corporation

by bam

A cited, high-school-and-up survey of the US business forms, and the direct sequel to 'What a Business Entity Actually Is.' It is not legal or tax advice, and it says so throughout: it teaches you what to ASK a lawyer or accountant, not the answer for your situation. Course 1 gave you the method, that any entity is a bundle of FOUR decisions (who pays the debts, who pays the tax, who owns it and how ownership moves, and who decides). This course applies that method across the actual US menu: the sole proprietorship and general partnership you can fall into without filing, the limited partnership and the LLP that add a liability wall, the LLC that became the modern default, the C-corporation built to raise money, and the nonprofits, where 501(c)(3), (c)(4) and (c)(6) are three different deals with three different rules on donations and politics. Two ideas get a full lesson each because they are the most misunderstood in the subject. First, the S-corp is a TAX ELECTION, not an entity type: it changes only how a business is taxed and leaves liability, ownership and governance to the entity underneath it. Second, a benefit corporation (a legal form a state recognises) is not the same thing as a Certified B Corp (a private certification granted by the nonprofit B Lab), two different things that most content blurs. The organizing insight is that a real menu mixes three kinds of thing, an entity, a tax status, and a private certification, and telling them apart is most of the skill. The capstone asks you to match a real scenario to a form and defend it against the four decisions, and against a specific alternative you rejected.