Business formation
Filing the paperwork is the easy half. The half that costs money later is the structure you chose, and whether the tax status sitting on top of it was ever right for the size of your business.
2026
One price, any state. The state's own filing fee is set by the state and goes to the state, not to us.
Articles or certificate of formation filed with the state, plus the federal EIN from the IRS. Plus the state's filing fee, which runs from about $50 to about $500 depending on where you file.
Includes a 15-minute intro consultation, so the structure and the tax status are settled before anything is filed.
Filing the election for a company that already exists. The election itself is due within two months and fifteen days of the start of the tax year it is meant to apply to; a late one needs relief, which is a different conversation.
The election an LLC or a partnership files to be taxed as a C corporation: the company pays tax on its own profit and files its own 1120 return. The effective date is yours to choose — no earlier than 75 days before the filing and no later than 12 months after it.
The EIN is free from the IRS. You are paying for it to be applied for correctly and on the same day the entity is filed, not for the number itself.
The election saves self-employment tax on the profit above your salary — that part is real. What gets left out is the cost of carrying it: payroll you must actually run from the first month, a separate 1120-S return every year, bookkeeping clean enough to support a salary you can defend as reasonable, and a much shorter distance between you and an examination if that salary is set low. Below roughly $50,000 of profit, the regime usually costs more than it saves. The number where it turns is your number, not a rule of thumb, and it is the first thing worth working out.
Illustrative, with the salary set at 60 percent of profit and the regime costed at payroll, an 1120-S and the extra bookkeeping. Your salary, your state and the qualified business income deduction all move the crossing point.
Only two of these are things you register with a state: an LLC and a corporation. The other three are what happens when you register nothing, or a tax status laid on top of one of those two — which is why the word “structure” does more harm than good here. Every comparison on the internet lists what each one is. The useful column is the last one: the case where it is the wrong choice, which is the case nobody selling you a package will mention.
Files onSchedule C with your personal return
No entity at all — just you, working.
You have employees, customers on your premises, a vehicle on the road with your name on it, or anything a claim could attach to. The moment there is something to lose, the absence of an entity stops being simplicity and becomes exposure.
None of it is secret. It is simply not in anyone's interest to tell you before you have paid.
The answer changes completely. The S-corporation election is off the table entirely. A single-member LLC owned by a nonresident files Form 5472 with a pro forma 1120 every year, and the penalty for not filing it starts at $25,000 — for a company that may have earned nothing at all. Getting the structure right at formation is far cheaper than discovering this in year three.
ITIN and international clientsBring what the business actually does, what it expects to make, who owns it and where you live. Fifteen minutes decides the structure, the tax status and the state — before anything is filed and while changing your mind is still free.
General information for 2026, not advice about your business, and not legal advice. Choosing a structure has legal consequences as well as tax ones; complex ownership, investor terms and operating agreements belong with an attorney. State fees and requirements are set by each state and change.