For many, the American dream involves owning a business and achieving financial stability. However, to achieve this American dream, one must create a business plan that involves the consideration of appropriate business structure. In the United States there are several business structures offered for consideration. Sole proprietorships, partnerships, corporations, and limited liability companies have their advantages and disadvantages. Any new business must evaluate the available business forms to determine which structure will be the most advantageous to the new business. The three most important aspects to determining a business structure are taxation, liability, and growth opportunities (capital mainly). In a scenario involving the …show more content…
Sole proprietorships are simple to set up and simple to begin conducting business. However, there are several significant drawbacks to sole proprietorship. Sole proprietorship has one owner and is therefore limited in its access to capital (Cole, 2011). Without access to additional capital, a business could struggle and would be unable to grow. Another significant drawback is legal liability. Given that there is only one owner, all liability resides with the one owner (Cole, 2011). This sole legal liability puts the owner’s personal property and business property at risk. In the business case involving Mr. Picard and Ms. Crusher, sole proprietorship is not an available option due to the presence of two owners and the concern of legal liability. The Final Frontier would be not appropriate as a sole proprietorship. Partnership Similar to a sole proprietorship, a partnership business structure is simple to create. There are no legal forms to file and agreements between the partners are not required (Kubasek, Browne, Herron, Dhooge, & Barkacs, 2016). A partnership business structure allows two people to combine resources to enhance business profits (Winrow, 2008). With the addition of another owner, capital funds are increased, resulting in additional growth potential. Another advantage to engaging in a partnership is the method of taxation. Income in a partnership flows through as personal income;
The benefits of Partnership Company are that business is anything but difficult to build up and start-up expenses are low. There is more capital accessible for the business. Workers that are of high-bore are made accomplices. The burdens are that the obligation of the accomplices for the obligations of the business is boundless . There is additionally danger of differences and contact among accomplices and administration. Every accomplice is an agent of the partnership and is at risk for activities by different accomplices. This means that it brothers choose this type, they will be responsible for each other’s action irrespective of the fact whether they like it or
After gaining enough knowledge on the types of business structure, business owners can proceed to the process so that their plans of owning a business will turn into reality. After reading several resources, the process will be divided into five stages. The first stage is the planning and research. This involves developing viable business ideas, knowing the target customers and possible competitors, searching for the right location, thinking what will be the business name, and marketing strategy. In this stage, a business plan should be made. Business Link (2016) refers, “business plan as a document that defines why you’re in business, your goals, and how to achieve those goals and it also covers all major aspects of the business, including
When it comes to partnerships Alex, Bill, Carl, and Devon will have two options- a general partnership or a limited partnership. Partnerships are beginning to be a business form of the past. Once upon a time, partnerships were “the default form of business and provided the benefit of pass-through taxation, but lacked the important feature of limited liability” (Chrisman, 2010, p. 465). In a general partnership, each partner associated with the entity will be held liable for their own business decisions as well as
2. Why do many entrepreneurs initially set up their businesses as sole proprietorships? Why do many successful entrepreneurs eventually decide to convert their sole proprietorship to some other form
Liability All liabilities are the responsibility of each partner. In the event of litigation, any creditors can go after the personal assets of each partner to recover any debt owed. But since liability is spread out between the owners, one may feel less risk is being taken. 2. Income Taxes General partnership may also benefit from pass-through taxation, meaning the partners are taxed like sole proprietors. Business income is reported on the personal tax filing while business losses can be deducted to reduce personal tax liability. The partnership itself is not subject to federal income tax. However the partnership needs to file an information return utilizing the IRS Form 1065. 3. Longevity or continuity of the organization Once the partnership agreement is fulfilled, the general partnership may dissolve. A buy/sell agreement may be included in the articles of the partnership to allow the
In setting up a new business the first step is setting up the best business structure for the need of the business. There are many different things that need to be looked at in order to determine the correct entity that will be used. Will there be partners is a big question in this determination, another questions which is the most correct for the business legally. Another consideration needs to be the legal liability as well as the tax liabilities in considering the best choice for the entity of the business.
John, when starting a business one has several options in the type of business structure to use. The different types of business structures are the sole proprietorship structure, the partnership structure, the corporation structure, the S corporation structure, and the limited liability company structure. Each structure has advantages and disadvantages and possible tax consequences.
The below table compares and contrasts business structures on the basis of the most common issues, naming: taxation, liability, risk and control, continuity of existence, transferability and expense and formality (Quickmba, n.d.). Also, you will notice that in the table the similarities are extended from one structure to the other, while differences are kept in separate cells.
A partnership is a business that has 2 or more people working in it like Starbucks is a business that is in a partnership. The advantages are you have more capita available to you and the company you have combined skills with other workers simple to set up you have tax advantages the disadvantages are unlimited liability you have to share your profit with the other owners you can have conflicts with owners or workers that do not agree partnership ends to death and possible
Choosing the proper form for one’s business is one of the most important decisions a business owner can make. Shania Jackson has a lot of different options in her disposal. Each of the different 5 forms that
Since the beginning of time, mankind has always had some form of trade. It started off as bartering and trade of general goods and slowly progressed over time. Different forms of specialized trade arose over time such as the trade of salt within Africa among Trans-Saharan trade routes and the large fur-trade market in northern Missouri that flourished throughout the span of the seventeenth century. Today within the United States there is a market economy that has thrived as a successful form of free trade in which the producers and the consumers of various products determine how the market will progress. All of this has lead to the modern day business structures which are utilized by all producers in order to obtain a successful and
However, the business owner can also attempt to operate his/her business by bootstrapping, which refers to the operation of an entity by using limited sources of capital (Gregory, n.d.). In addition, the financial factors should also include financial planning. Financial planning normally refers to the cash flow and income statement, balance sheet and breakeven analyses. Therefore, there are three major sections to an ideal business plan that are the organizational goals, the sales forecasts, and the financial factors.
A partnership is a business organization where the partners own the business together and are
There are a number of forms of ownership that the business can take. The main forms are sole proprietorship, partnership, Limited Liability Corporation, corporation and S corporation. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these forms that will be discussed in this section. A sole proprietorship essentially has the person as the business. In this situation, the proprietor bears all of the risk involved in the business. Business income flows through to the proprietor's personal taxes. For some individuals there are tax advantages, but for many the appeal of the sole proprietorship is its simplicity. The IRS defines a partnership as a relationship existing between two or more individuals who joint to carry on a business. Partners divide income according to their own agreement and that income flows through to their personal taxes. Partners also have a high level of liability for any legal action that befalls the company.
Firstly, even though there are different types of partnership such as general, limited and limited liability partnership. This three different type has its advantages and disadvantages however we will be mainly focused on general partnership. One advantage of the general partnership is raising capital due to the nature of the business the partners will raise capital to start-up the business. Therefore more partners mean more capital can be put to the business, this allows the business to have more potential for growth and profitability. Another advantage is that a partnership is less complicated to form and run than a company they don’t have legal filing requirements, this means they don’t have to file accounts and documents with Companies House.