A Virginia LLC is a legal entity that provides limited liability protection for its owners. Starting a business is a great endeavor but any business will create the opportunity for legal risks. Afterall, your business will be dealing with customers, vendors, contractors and may have employees and own assets such as cars or real estate. Each business interaction creates a risk of liability. A properly formed Virginia LLC provides a layer of protection between the business activities and risks of the business and the owners of the Virginia LLC business. Owners are not liable for the debts and liabilities of the LLC merely because they are owners (unless they otherwise agree to be liable). Limited Liability Protection is the biggest reason to form a Virginia LLC for your business. Please note there are important exceptions to limited liability protection and essential obligations you should comply with in order to preserve the protection for you. Once you purchase our Virginia LLC formation services, you will receive our eBook, "The Six Step LLC Formula for Limited Liability Protection" which provides you with this important information. Other benefits to using a Virginia LLC for your business include more tax choices, operational and management flexibility, a more professional image and a lower risk of tax audit.

A Virginia LLC is formed when it is recognized as its own separate person under Virginia state law. The Virginia LLC laws require that a document containing certain statutorily required information be prepared and filed with the State along with a filing fee. Basically, a Virginia LLC is formed when propre filing papers have been processed with the State of Virginia and the State issues an official formation document. The processing time varies in Virginia depending on whether the filing is a regular or expedited filing and the workload of the State. Unlike other states, Virginia will not give a Virginia LLC a formation date of the day the documents were filed. Rather, the formation date of a Virginia LLC is the date the processing is completed by the State. Accordingly, it is strongly recommended that you not conduct any business activity until the Virginia LLC has been completely formed as this best protects your liability risk.

Virginia charges a filing fee of $100 to form an LLC. Then each year, the annual fee to maintain the Virginia LLC is $50 a year. SO, the costs are minimal compared to the benefits you receive by running your business through an LLC. It is important that your LLC is properly filed and meets the state requirements. If you want to be sure of this compliance, you can hire an attorney to help you form your LLC or you can use an experienced document and filing services such as VirginiaBusinessFormation.com to form your Virginia LLC.

A Virgnia LLC can have as few as one member or as many members as the Virginia LLC wants or requires.

Virginia requires that a new name for a Virginia LLC cannot be the same as or deceptively similar to another legal entity name registered in Virginia. Now, name availability issues can get tricky because Virginia can be peculiar when it comes to deciding whether whether a name is too similar to another name. If you would like, please take advantage of our Free Name Search Availability service whch we offer for free and with no obligation.

No. When a name is available in Virginia for use as a name for a Virginia LLC, this just means that the legal entity can have this name and register it as a Virginia LLC name with the State. This does not necessarily mean that the name is available as a trademark to promote your goods and services. Trademark law and rights are governed under an entirely different set of laws and regulations. If your business intends on developing a valuable trademark to promote your goods or services, it is recommended you seek the advice of a trademark attorney to advice you. You can also visit the government Trademark website for more information on trademarks.

You are not required to use a lawyer to form a Virginia LLC. You can learn the rules and requirements yourself and submit your own filing or you can purchase a low cost document and filing service such as our Virginia LLC Formation Services. Please note that self submitted filings are 3-5 times more likely to be rejected than filings submitted through experienced services. While a lawyer is not required to form a Virginia LLC, if you find that you need expert legal advice in making this decision and determining the structure of your Virginia LLC, it is recommended you seek a competent attorney. VirginiaBusinessFormation.com is not a law firm and cannot provide legal advice. Our company provides a document preparation and filign service only. Many of our customers save money by using our services to form a Virginia LLC but then hire an attorney to advise them on how to structure the ownership and management of their Virginia LLC and for other business matters. You can save a lot of money by using an LLC formation service such as ours to actually form the LLC. In fact, many of our customers are lawyers who use our service to form a Virginia LLC for their clients.

Yes. Virginia requires that you provide an official business address for your Virginia LLC but this address can be your home address if you plan on operating your LLC business out of your home or if you do not have an office address yet. Please note that you should check with your local county or city to make sure that you comply with any local law or zoning requirements when operating a home business.

Generally, a Virginia LLC is allowed to conduct any lawful business, purpose or activity, whether or not such business, purpose or activity is carried on for a profit. Accordingly, the Virginia LLC laws contain no prohibition on what a Virgnia LLC can do so long as it is lawful. However, if what you plan on doing involves a business or other activity regulared by other Virgnia laws or Virginia government agencies, you should check with those laws or agencies to ensure there are no other restrictions on your ability to use an LLC for your contemplated activity. Also, a Virginia LLC can choose to limit the type of allowed business activity by stating so in either its formation document or LLC Operating Agreement.

Generally, a Virginia LLC is not limited to just operating one business activity. The Virginia LLC members can decide to operate multiple businesses under one Virginia LLC if they chose. If you are forming a professional LLC (known as a PLLC) to perform a licensed professional service (ex., lawyers, accountants, architects, physicians), the services to be performed by the professional LLC (PLLC) are limited to the licensed professional service. If a Virginia LLC runs multiple businesses, the assets of all of the businesses are subject to the liabilities of all of the businesses. Accordingly, many times, Virginia business owners will create a separate Virginia business LLC for each business so that the assets of each business can be protected from the liability of the other businesses.

For most small business conducting business in Virginia, it is not cost efficient to form the LLC in another state. Please note that it is unlawful for an LLC to conduct business in Virginia unless it is duly registered. If your LLC (regardless of where it is formed) is "doing business" in Virginia, then the LLC will be required to either be formed here or to register here as a foreign LLC. Under either scenario, you will be required to pay the annual fee to maintain the registration in Virginia. So, many people end up paying double the fees and registered agent fees in this scenario where their LLC is formed in a different state such as Delaware or Nevada but they are conducting business in Virginia. Other states have different rules that apply to LLCs formed in their states. In some situations there may be advantages to forming your LLC in another state- examples include when you are going to be physicially located and doing business in other states or countries, you plan on raising significants amount of equity capital from sophisticated investors such as venture capital companies or institutional investors, or you plan on taking your business public. But in most small business situations, forming in your home state where the business is being conducted results in the most simple and cost efficient structure. Some people mistakenly think that if they form their LLC in an income tax free jurisdiction, they will avoid paying state tax on the income generated by the LLC. This is not the answer in most cases. The issue of where you pay "income" taxes has nothing to do with where your LLC is formed. Rather the taxes owed to each state depends on where your are physically conducting business and how much revenue is generated in that state from your business. So, again, if your business is being conducted in Virginia and is generating revenue in Virginia, the Virginia state income taxes will apply to that revenue regardless of where the LLC is formed. If, on the other hand, you are only going to be doing and conducting business out of Nevada or Delaware, then you may be able to avoid Virginia income taxes by not conducting business here or having a business presence here. The question of what arises to "doing business" really depends on your facts and circumstances. We are not an accounting firm and so cannot advise you specifically on where your business will create income tax liability. We recommend you seek the services of a competent CPA to provide such advice but please know that this answer is much less about where you are formed and much more about where you are conducting business and generating revenue. There may be a situation where you can set up all our business activity outside of Virginia but again if you are running your business in Virginia, this may be difficult. A CPA can properly advise you on your options for state income tax planning.

You may have heard a lot of advertisements claiming that it is better to form your business in Nevada or Delaware. Those states do have solid LLC statutes and they provide LLC owners with the utmost privacy. HOwever, Virginia LLC laws already provide protection against disclosure of the owners of an LLC just like Nevada and Delaware. There is one difference. Unlike Virginia, the business address of the LLC in Delaware or Nevada s not a matter of public record. HOWEVER, and this is a big one. If you are conducting the LLC business in Virginia, Virginia will require you to register the Nevada LLC or Delaware LLC in Virginia which requires the filing of a public record document. So, the privacy benefits of the Nevada and Delaware does not benefit an LLC doing business in Virginia. In addition, if you choose to form your LLC elsewhere, you will be required to maintain two registrations each year and two registered agents thus increasing your compliance requirements and paperwork each year. For a small business, the added costs and compliance requirements can be significant.