Company name

[Tony Scharf]

On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 12:42 PM, Andy Tarpinian <evildead at nyc.rr.com> wrote:
>
>  From what I can tell so far, the legal name of the business is the
> official name of the person or entity that owns a business. You can
> then have a fictitious name - doing business as etc... You would do
> this if the business name you wanted to use did not contain the last
> name of the owners name.
>

Well, it depends.  If your 'incorporated' technically, your creating a
new legal entity completely seperate from yourself and you become its
soul stockholder and employee (which is my current case).  In that
case, you can name the company whatever you want to providing there is
not already a company with the same registered name.  This name is the
'taxable entity', and the corporation actually has rights just like
you do (you could even technically sue yourself) and when you do work
under the company name, its the company that assumes the liability
(the company also owns the assets - not you).

Once you have this name, you can get a 'doing business as' to specify
a second name for the company, or to specify divisions.  For example,
my company is "Matrix Media Solutions" (thought of it and filed BEFORE
the damn movie came out).  I also have a DBA Anthony Scharf Consulting
and DWINK hosting (bought the servers and hosting agreements from a
friend who got out of the business).  All the taxes get paid as Matrix
Media Solutions, Inc, but my invoices and payments are to the DBA
names.

Its actually a lot simpler than it looks, and I would reccomend
getting a tax lawyer or CPA to help you incorporate.  Trying to
translate the IRS mumbo jumbo is much harder than actually running a
micro business like mine.

Tony