West Virginia LLC Setup Tips

Run a Business or Own Real Estate in West Virginia?

If you operate an unincorporated business in the state of West Virginia you're probably bearing more business risk than you should. Similarly, though the case isn't quite as clear for real estate investors, if you're directly investing in real estate in West Virginia either as an individual or through a general partnership, you probably also are bearing more risk than you want to (unless there's tons of liability insurance coverage on the real estate).

Fortunately, business owners and real estate investors active in West Virginia have a great option for minimizing the business, legal and financial risks: the West Virginia limited liability company. For about 100 bucks and a few days of waiting time, you can set up an LLC with the Secretary of State. By then putting a business or real estate investment inside the LLC, your business and investment risks are greatly reduced.

Note, further, that business owners have an additional benefit related to using a limited liability company. A business that operates as an LLC may elect to be treated as a corporation or as an S Corporation. But let me explain.

Normally, an LLC that operates a business is treated for tax purposes as either a sole proprietorship or as a partnership. And sometimes those default classifications work well. But in cases where a business becomes quite profitable, often times owners can save thousands of dollars a year in income or self-employment taxes by making an election to be treated for federal and state tax purposes as either a regular corporation or an S Corporation.

All of the above information represents, in a sense, the good news. Unfortunately setting up a something like a LLC (or a corporation) and then operating the entity can be expensive and tricky. And the expense and trickiness starts with the setup. You can spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars setting up something like an LLC. Ugh.

But there's some good news here. The state of West Virginia website provides free forms and other wonderful online resources you can use to complete the LLC setup work yourself. This setup work is particularly easy to do if you work from do-it-yourself instructions such as those provided by one of my do-it-yourself West Virginia LLC formation kits.

Premium Kit for West Virginia LLC

If you would like to take the do-it-yourself route to setting up an LLC in West Virginia, you may want to invest $44.95 to acquire the premium edition of my West Virginia kit. With the kit, you'll get a short e-book that describes why and how you form an LLC in West Virginia, including the steps for filing the articles of LLC formation using free forms available from the state and the steps for getting a tax identification number from the Internal Revenue Service. The kit also discusses when and how you make the special (nearly secret) tax elections available for having your new LLC treated for tax purposes as a corporation or even as an S corporation. (In the right situation, corporate tax treatement can save your business thousands of dollars a year.) Your new West Virginia LLC also needs LLC operating agreements--and so accordingly, the kit also includes sample, reusable boilerplate limited liability company operating agreements which you can recycle.

If you've completed your research into the LLC option and are ready to begin the work of setting up your own limited liability company, you can click the button below to buy your kit and get started:

Economy Kit for West Virginia LLC

By the way, typically real estate investors don't want to make elections to have the LLC treated as a corporation or S corporation. And if this is your case, you may also want to consider the $34.95 economy version of the West Virginia do-it-yourself kit. The economy version includes everything available in the premium version of the kit EXCEPT for the discussion of and steps for making the tax elections to be treated as a corporation. Note, for example, that the economy kit does include the sample LLC operating agreements.

To purchase the economy kit (and this kit is often the perfect option for individual and husband and wife real estate investors) lick the buy button below: