Small Businesses

Happy “National Small Business Week!”

May 23, 2012 | Michael R. Smith

As a mild spring finally melts into the heat of summer, perhaps you’ll soon take a moment to enjoy a small cup of lemonade from a small business on a sidewalk near you. After all it is National Small Business Week.

But while you enjoy your refreshment, consider taking the moment to pay homage to small business and ponder the following questions: What is so unique about a small business? What is it about some small businesses that set them above the rest? When it comes to the legal aspects of business, how can business owners be active rather than passive and what are the payoffs? What are the legal considerations inherent to owning and operating a small business? What about a grown-up’s small business can ensure it is any less transient than the venture which sold you your beverage?

If you are a prospective or current small business owner, you likely know first-hand the value of answering such questions earlier rather than later. During the creation of a company and after it is formed, the legal concerns which come into play should be dealt with head-on. Like the rest of a savvy entrepreneur’s endeavors, the legal tasks of business organization and transactions, when accomplished both properly and skillfully, are their own reward.

Without a doubt, small businesses are the workhorse of the U.S. economy, representing 99.7 percent of all employer firms and generating 65 percent of net new jobs over the past 17 years (Source of data: U.S. Small Business Administration). The benefits small businesses render to local economies are no joke. An organization we support, The 3/50 Project, recognizes this reality and is setting out to “save the brick and mortars our nation is built on” in a way that is turning heads. No matter what your relation may be to the wonders of small business ownership, consider celebrating the week by exposing yourself to the simple mission of The 3/50 Project and learning in under a minute how you can very practically help to “save your local economy.”
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Is it legal for a business to use unpaid interns?

March 15, 2011 | Michael R. Smith

[Note: The Department of Labor guidance discussed in this article, Fact Sheet #71, has been superseded. See the discussion of the revised policy here.]

With summer vacation approaching, and with the job market being what it is, small business owners may be approached by college or high school students offering to work as undpaid interns. At first, that may seem like a great idea — the business gets free help for the summer, maybe to fill in for vacationing employees, and the student gains experience and a chance to build a resume. Sounds like a win-win situation, right?

Well, maybe not. In fact, the situation could place the business on the receiving end of a lawsuit or government enforcement action. The problem is that most interns at for-profit businesses qualify as employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act, or FSLA, and must be paid at least minimum wage and overtime compensation if they work more than 40 hours in a week). In other words, you can’t avoid paying minimum wage by paying nothing.

However, there is a very narrow exception for interns that qualify as “trainees.” Last April, the Department of Labor published Fact Sheet #71, listing the criteria for determining whether an intern is a trainee. If an internship has all six of the following characteristics, the intern is not classified as an employee under the FLSA.

The intern receives training similar to the training he or she would receive in an educational environment. Preferably, the program should be centered on a classroom or academic setting, not on the business’s operations. Ideally, the program should be associated with an educational institution that gives the intern academic credit for the program.

The internship is for the benefit of the intern. If the intern’s activities are primarily for the benefit of the employer (see item 5), the fact that the intern also acquires useful job skills is not sufficient to classify him or her as a trainee. Ideally, the intern will learn skills that are useful to other employers, not just to the business sponsoring the program.

The intern does not displace employees. Instead, existing employees closely supervise the intern’s work. If the business uses an internship to supplement its staff or to fill in for employees who are absent or on vacation, the intern is an employee, not a trainee.

The business does not derive an immediate advantage from the intern’s work; in fact, the internship may even impede the business’s operations. Although it can probably be argued that the business always derives some amount of benefit from the internship program, the internship must be primarily and predominantly for the benefit of the intern, not the benefit of the business.

The business will not necessarily employ the intern when the internship is finished. If the business uses the internship as a trial period for prospective employees, the intern is probably an employee, not a trainee.

The intern and the business understand that the intern will not be paid during the internship.

Given those criteria, it’s easy to understand why a Department of Labor official told The New York Times last year that most unpaid internships with for-profit businesses are not legal. (The story is different, however, for internships with governmental agencies and nonprofit organizations. That’s the topic of a future blog post.)

When the Department of Labor released Fact Sheet #71 last April, some news sources and bloggers described the six criteria listed above as “new regulations.” In fact, the criteria are are not new, and they are not regulations. They originated in 1947 with Walling v. Portland Terminal Co., a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court dealing with a training program for prospective railyard brakemen. Since then the criteria have been applied, explained, and refined by lower courts and the Department of Labor. Rather than a new regulation, Fact Sheet #71 can be seen as the Department’s warning shot across the bow of businesses that use “unpaid interns” as a source of free labor.

A note of caution about the use of these criteria. If the internship satisfies all six of the above criteria, the intern is deemed to be a trainee and not an employee, but only for determining whether the Fair Labor Standards Act applies. That’s only one of many contexts in which the categorization of a person as an “employee” carries legal significance, and different criteria apply in each of those different contexts. Even though a trainee is not an employee for FSLA purposes, he or she may be an employee for other purposes, including the relevant state labor laws.
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Just what IS a limited liability company? Part 7. It’s a bundle of tax choices.

March 7, 2011 | Michael R. Smith

[This is the last of a seven-part series of posts discussing the characteristics of limited liability companies and comparing them to the characteristics of corporations, general partnerships, and sole proprietorships. Here’s the entire list.

Part 1. Background on sole proprietorships.
Part 2. Background on partnerships.
Part 3. Background on corporations.
Part 4. LLCs are distinct legal entities, separate from their owners.
Part 5. A limited liability company’s owners are not liable for the LLC’s obligations.
Part 6. Options for an LLC’s management structure.
Part 7. Options for an LLC’s tax treatment.]

In prior posts, I’ve discussed several characteristics of LLCs. First, like corporations, LLCs are entities separate from their owners. Second, also like corporations, the owners are not liable for the obliigations of the LLC. Third, they offer choices of management structures: They can be managed directly by the owners, like sole proprietorships and many partnerships, or they can be managed by others who are selected by the owners, in much the same way that shareholders of a corporation elect directors to run the business. This last post of the series looks at the tax characteristics of LLCs.

Interestingly, LLCs do not have a specific category in the Internal Revenue Code or the Tax Regulations. Instead, their tax treatment is governed by the so-called “check-the-box regulation.” It provides that the LLC may elect to be treated in one of several ways, and the choices depend on whether the LLC has one member or more than one member.

The default status for a single-member LLC is that it is a “disregarded entity” in that all the income and expenses go directly on the member’s personal tax return, just like a sole proprietorship. The LLC itself doesn’t even have to file a tax return. The default status for a multi-member LLC is to be taxed as if it were a partnership. Alternatively, either a single-member LLC or a multi-member LLC can elect to be taxed as if it were a corporation, either as a Subchapter C corporation or, if the LLC meets certain criteria, as a Subchapter S corporation. To decide which is the best tax strategy for your LLC, you should consult both your lawyer and your accountant.
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Just what IS a limited liability company? Part 6. It offers choices of management structure.

February 20, 2011 | Michael R. Smith

[This is the sixth post in a seven-part series discussing the characteristics of limited liability companies and comparing them to the characteristics of corporations, general partnerships, and sole proprietorships. Here’s the entire list.

Part 1. Background on sole proprietorships.
Part 2. Background on partnerships.
Part 3. Background on corporations.
Part 4. LLCs are distinct legal entities, separate from their owners.
Part 5. A limited liability company’s owners are not liable for the LLC’s obligations.
Part 6. Options for an LLC’s management structure.
Part 7. Options for an LLC’s tax treatment.]

Previous posts discussed the management structures of the three classic business entities that we’re using as a framework for discussing limited liability companies and, in particular, exactly who is responsible for running the business day-to-day.

Sole Proprietorships. Remember Drucker’s General Store, the example I used to illustrate sole proprietorships? Sam Drucker ran his own store on a day-to-day basis. In fact, I’m not sure Sam even had any employees. That’s the prototypical management structure for a sole proprietorship — the proprietor himself or herself runs the business on a day-to-day basis.

Corporations. Once again, corporations are at the opposite end of the spectrum from sole proprietorships. As discussed earlier,the owners of a corporation (i.e., the shareholders), have no role in the day-to-day operation of the business. Instead, their role is limited to electing a board of directors who, in turn, usually delegate responsibility to officers and employees of the company. Of course, in a closely held company, it’s very common for the owners, acting as shareholders, to elect themselves as directors and then to appoint themselves as officers.

General Partnerships. The management structure of general partnerships varies a bit more, but usually the day to day affairs are managed by the partners themselves — by all of the partners, or by a management committee composed of partners, or by a single managing partner.

Limited Liability Companies. Fundamentally, there are two different ways limited liability companies can be managed — by the members themselves or by one or more managers, who are appointed by the members. In other words, a limited liability company has the flexibility to be managed like a sole proprietorship and many partnerships are managed — by the owners of the business themselves. However, it’s also possible for the owners to be relatively far removed from the day-to-day operation of the company, with a role largely restricted to appointing one or more managers to operate the LLC. Note, however, that the members of a manager-managed LLC are free to name one or more of their own as manager(s).

Even a single-member LLC has the same choices of management by the members or management by managers. A few days ago, in explaining why a single-member LLC needs an operating agreement, I touched on some of the reasons that the sole owner of a limited liability company might choose to make their LLC manager-managed.

So one of the advantages of a limited liability company is that it offers choices for management structure. Next we’ll see that a limited liability company offers choices for tax treatment as well.
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Why should a single-member LLC have an operating agreement?

February 18, 2011 | Michael R. Smith

Under current Indiana law, you can easily start up a limited liability company (LLC) with a credit card and an internet connection. After making a quick trip to the Indiana Secretary of State’s website, submitting articles of organization, and paying a fee you could have your very own LLC in about fifteen minutes. But what about creating an operating agreement for your LLC? Nothing about that process requires — or even mentions — an operating agreement. Strictly speaking, it’s not legally required, and if the LLC has only one member, an operating agreement may even seem pointless. Nonetheless, I advise all my clients with LLCs — even single-member LLCs — to have operating agreements.

The reason the Indiana Business Flexibility Act does not require an operating agreement is that it contains default rules that govern the LLC if there is no operating agreement (or if there is an operating agreement but it doesn’t address every issue). However, those default rules may or may not be what you want. Having an operating agreement created specifically for the needs and goals of your single-member LLC can help sort out which aspects of the Indiana Business Flexibility Act will apply to your LLC and which will be overridden.

A particular reason that I think single-member LLCs should have an operating agreement flows from the fact that I think most single-member LLCs (at least those owned by individuals rather than by another business entity) should be manager-managed rather than member-managed. Imagine you are the sole member of your own LLC, and it is member-managed. That means that you, and only you, have the authority to take actions on behalf of the LLC. Now imagine that you are in a serious accident and unable to manage your business for an extended period of time. There is no one who can step into your shoes and run the business in your absence.

However, imagine that you set the business up as a manager-managed LLC. You can name yourself as the manager and some other trusted person, such as your spouse, as the assistant manager who has the authority to step in and run the LLC if you are not able to. To do that, you’ll need an operating agreement that describes the authority of the other person to run the business when you can’t.

It’s also likely that third parties, such as banks and the IRS, will want to know various details about how the LLC is organized. An operating agreement includes information like who has the authority to sign contracts for the LLC, the LLC’s tax status, and other legally meaningful information. Being able to hand a third party a single document that clearly lays out all of the legally significant details about the LLC can save a lot of time and confusion for the member and the entities the LLC does business with.
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Just what IS a limited liability company? Part 5. It has a liability shield.

February 17, 2011 | Michael R. Smith

[This is the fifth post in a seven-part series discussing the characteristics of limited liability companies and comparing them to the characteristics of corporations, general partnerships, and sole proprietorships. Here’s the entire list.

Part 1. Background on sole proprietorships.
Part 2. Background on partnerships.
Part 3. Background on corporations.
Part 4. LLCs are distinct legal entities, separate from their owners.
Part 5. A limited liability company’s owners are not liable for the LLC’s obligations.
Part 6. Options for an LLC’s management structure.
Part 7. Options for an LLC’s tax treatment.]

The last entry in this series explained that a limited liability company has its own legal identity, separate from its members. A related concept is that a limited liability company has a liability shield, sometimes called a corporate veil, between itself and its members. That means that the members of a limited liability company are not liable for the debts or obligations of the LLC itself, just as the shareholders of a corporation are not liable for the debts or obligations of the corporation itself.

To see how that works, let’s imagine that you and two of your good friends, Jack and Jill, decide to buy a bicycle shop. You consult an attorney, and he recommends that you create a limited liability company to buy the shop. He writes an operating agreement for you, which all three of you sign, files articles of organization in the Indiana Secretary of State‘s office, and takes care of other details such as obtaining an Employer Identification Number . At that point you are the proud owners of a limited liability company Three Good Friends, LLC . (By the way, there is no such LLC in Indiana. I know that because I ran a search on the Secretary of State’s website.) The purpose of the LLC is to buy and run a bicycle shop. To raise the money, you and Jill each drain your savings accounts, and Jack mortgages his house to the hilt. All three of you put the money (called your initial capital contributions) into the LLC, and with that money the LLC buys a bicycle shop, which you rename as Three Good Friends Bicycle Emporium. The LLC’s lawyer files a certificate of assumed business name showing that Three Good Friends, LLC is now doing business as Three Good Friends Bicycle Emporium.

While you’re working in the shop one afternoon, a delivery truck arrives. A LARGE delivery truck. The driver comes in and asks where you’d like to put the 700 bicycles you ordered. (I don’t know if a single truck can actually hold 700 bicycles, but cut me some slack and go with me on this.) You tell him there must be some mistake because you ordered only 7 bicycles. After a frantic search through your computer files, you realize that a mistake was indeed made — and that you’re the one who made it. You really did order 700 bicycles. And they’re expensive bicycles. VERY expensive. You make a few phone calls and find out that the bicycles cannot be returned and that the shop will have to pay for them. You also know that there’s not nearly enough money in the LLC’s bank account to pay for the bicycles.

You tell Jack and Jill what happened, expecting them to be furious — and Jack is. As Jack often does, he imagines the worst. He says that the bicycle manufacturer is going to sue not only the shop but all three of you. He worries that not only will the three of you lose the business, but that he’ll lose his house, which he mortgaged to the hilt to come up with the money for the business. Jill, being her characteristically calm self, tells Jack not to worry. The reason that they set up a limited liability company was so that none of the three good friends can be held liable for the debts of Three Good Friends Bicycle Emporium. She tells Jack that even if the LLC goes bankrupt, his house is safe from the bicycle manufacturer. Is Jill right?
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Just what IS a limited liability company? Part 3. It’s not a corporation.

January 30, 2011 | Michael R. Smith

[This is the third post in a seven-part series discussing the characteristics of limited liability companies and comparing them to the characteristics of corporations, general partnerships, and sole proprietorships. Here’s the entire list.

Part 1. Background on sole proprietorships.
Part 2. Background on partnerships.
Part 3. Background on corporations.
Part 4. LLCs are distinct legal entities, separate from their owners.
Part 5. A limited liability company’s owners are not liable for the LLC’s obligations.
Part 6. Options for an LLC’s management structure.
Part 7. Options for an LLC’s tax treatment.]

Let’s get back to our trek toward a discussion of the basics of limited liability companies. The first two types of business structures we’ve looked at — sole proprietorships and partnerships — have two significant features in common. First, the owner or owners are liable for the obligations of the business. Second, the business itself does not pay taxes. Instead, the income and other tax items are “passed through” to the owner or owners, who pay tax on the income. Things change with corporations, the third type of business structure.

Although corporations are not as old as sole proprietorships or partnerships, business organizations with at least some of the characteristics of corporations have been around for centuries. For example, the oldest corporation in North America, Hudson’s Bay Company, was incorporated in 1670.

Perhaps the most important feature of a corporation is that the owners of the corporation — called stockholders or shareholders — are NOT liable for the obligations of the business. And that’s very good news for people who owned stock in Lehman Brothers, which melted down into the largest bankruptcy in American history. Or, going back a little further to previous record holders, people who owned stock in Enron and Worldcom. Even though the people who owned stock in those corporations may have lost everything they invested, they were not liable to the corporations’ creditors, and they did not get pulled into the corporate bankruptcies. That protection against shareholders being held liable for the corporation’s obligations is sometimes called a liability shield or a corporate veil, and it doesn’t exist for sole proprietorships or general partnerships.
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Indiana Employers Should be Aware of Recent Supreme Court Decision

January 28, 2011 | Michael R. Smith

Most employers know (or should know) to be very careful about taking adverse action against an employee who has filed a claim of employment discrimination. The need for vigilance is even more important following last week’s decision of the United States Supreme Court , holding that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act includes “third-party reprisal” claims. Now, an employee may have a successful retaliation claim if he or she was fired because another employee filed a discrimination complaint.

In Thompson v. North American Stainless, LP, a man was fired after his fiancée filed a sexual discrimination charge against their mutual employer. He, in turn, brought a lawsuit against the company claiming the termination of his employment was in retaliation for his fiancée’s discrimination complaint. The Supreme Court agreed that the man could raise the claim, reversing the decisions of two lower courts that had held that he could not. The Supreme Court held that the man had a right to sue because of his “close relationship” with the woman who filed the original discrimination complaint.

The result may be surprising to some people, perhaps more so because the eight Supreme Court Justices who participated (recently appointed Justice Kagan did not) were unanimous. In reacting to the decision of the Court written by Justice Scalia, Jacquelyn A. Berrien, chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, expressed approval, stating that the decision “reaffirms the importance of preventing retaliation against those seeking to protect their civil rights.” Read the entire EEOC press release here. As Justice Ginsburg noted in her concurring opinion (in which Justice Breyer joined), the Court’s decision is consistent with the EEOC’s long-standing position.

One of the questions that a business should consider when thinking about firing an employee (or taking any other adverse action) is whether that employee has lodged any discrimination complaints and might later claim that the action was taken in retaliation for the complaint. But until now, many employers were probably concerned only with complaints filed by that particular employee. Now, the employer must also consider complaints that may have been filed by some other person with a close relationship. But what qualifies as a “close relationship?” Unfortunately, the Supreme Court did not completely answer the question, saying only that “firing a close family member will almost always” meet the standard. Because of the facts of the Thompson case, we also know that the relationship between two engaged employees is close enough, but would a dating relationship count? What about a pair of really close friends? Or second cousins, once removed? For now, we can only speculate.
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Just what IS a limited liability company? Part 2. It’s not a partnership.

January 23, 2011 | Michael R. Smith

[This is the second post in a seven-part series discussing the characteristics of limited liability companies and comparing them to the characteristics of corporations, general partnerships, and sole proprietorships. Here’s the entire list.

Part 1. Background on sole proprietorships.
Part 2. Background on partnerships.
Part 3. Background on corporations.
Part 4. LLCs are distinct legal entities, separate from their owners.
Part 5. A limited liability company’s owners are not liable for the LLC’s obligations.
Part 6. Options for an LLC’s management structure.
Part 7. Options for an LLC’s tax treatment.]

In the last entry, I began a discussion of the basics of limited liability companies. To start that discussion, I began by describing the first of three other types of business structures: sole proprietorships. This entry is about partnerships, and the next will describe corporations.

In a sense, a general partnership is like a sole proprietorship, but with multiple proprietors. Each partner is liable for all of the obligations of the partnership. In other words, a creditor of the partnership can sue any or all of the partners to collect what the partnership owes. Income taxes are also similar, but things get a little more complicated with multiple owners.

For tax purposes, a general partnership is a “pass-through entity.” Unlike a sole proprietorship, a partnership has to file a tax return, called Form 1065. However, the partnership itself does not have to pay taxes. Form 1065 is used to calculate the partnership’s profits or losses and other “tax items,” which are allocated to the partners, most often in proportion to their ownership interests. In other words, the tax items are “passed through” to the partners, and each partner receives a report from the partnership called a Schedule K-1 that tells the partner how much income, etc. to report on his or her own personal tax return. Then the partner pays income tax as an individual.

One more point worth noting about taxes. If the partner is actively involved in the operation of the partnership — in essence, if the partner is “employed” by the partnership — he or she is considered to be self-employed and must pay self-employment tax on his or her share of the partnership’s income. Again, being a partner is very much like being a sole proprietor, except for the “sole” part.

The general partnership is an old form of business association. For instance, in Dickens‘s A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley were partners. “The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.” Id. at p. 3. Of course, I’m not holding out Scrooge and Marley as a typical partnership or as a model of customer service. The example came to mind only because last month our family attended the Indiana Repertory Theater‘s annual production of A Christmas Carol, and I’ve always liked that line.

In the next entry, I’ll describe corporations, and then (finally!) get around to discussing limited liability companies.
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Just what IS a limited liability company? Part 1. It’s not a sole proprietorship.

January 22, 2011 | Michael R. Smith

[This begins a seven-part series of posts discussing the characteristics of limited liability companies and comparing them to the characteristics of corporations, general partnerships, and sole proprietorships. Here’s the entire list.

Part 1. Background on sole proprietorships.
Part 2. Background on partnerships.
Part 3. Background on corporations.
Part 4. LLCs are distinct legal entities, separate from their owners.
Part 5. A limited liability company’s owners are not liable for the LLC’s obligations.
Part 6. Options for an LLC’s management structure.
Part 7. Options for an LLC’s tax treatment.]

Limited liability companies or LLCs, particularly Indiana limited liability companies, will be a frequent topic of posts on this blog. To set the stage, I’d like to start with the most basic question: Exactly what IS a limited liability company? It will take me a few posts to go over the basics, but then I’ll move on to more sophisticated topics.

Way back, a long time ago, when I was in school (probably high school, but I’m not sure), I was taught that there are three types of business structures: sole proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations. Even then, that was a bit simplistic because there were other types of businesses, but that covered most of the waterfront. Today, it doesn’t come close because the most popular form for new small businesses is a limited liability company. However, the easiest way to understand what a limited liability company IS is to understand first what it is NOT. So let’s start with sole proprietorships.

As I learned way back then, a sole proprietorship is the classic one-person business in which the owner and the business are one and the same, even if the business is operated under some other name. I always thought of Drucker’s General Store on the television shows Petticoat Junction and Green Acres. (I told you it was a long time ago!) Most likely, Drucker’s General Store was a sole proprietorship. Sam Drucker and his store were one and the same. In other words, anything the store owned, Sam owned. On the flip side, anything the the store OWED, Sam owed.

For example, if someone slipped and fell on a pickle from Sam’s pickle barrel (I don’t remember if Sam had a pickle barrel, but he MUST have had one!) and successfully sued the store, the plaintiff could take money not only from the store’s cash register and bank account, but also from Sam’s bank account – and maybe even his house. That’s a disadvantage of a sole proprietorship. An advantage is that (unlike corporations, as well discuss later), the business itself does not have to pay income taxes. The income from the business goes straight to the owners Form 1040, on Schedule C to be specific, and the owner pays the taxes.

So a limited liability company is not a sole proprietorship. Next we’ll discuss partnerships, another type of business structure that differs from an LLC.
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