First off, pardon me if this question has been asked before (I looked and couldn’t find it), or if it is just a stupid question. Anyway, I’m in the process of starting up my home inspection business, and also getting licensed in some of the basic ancillary services.
I was interested in knowing if most home inspection companies form llc’s for each of their different services, or if they simply file a dba for each of them? Or neither?
Any help is appreciated ~ Sean
All under one LLC if it is inspection related.
Neither. You can do it all under one organization.
Furthermore, you can have more than one DBA under one LLC. I have two companies under one LLC doing business as different companies. So, if you can name your ancillary companies if you wish and market them separately under different names and lump it all under one LLC. In my case, my LLC name is generic and is completely different than my business names. Separation may be beneficial or may cause more confusion.
I would talk to my accountant and insurance company.
Thanks, everybody. Feeling my way through, so that helps out, a lot.
Doing multiple DBA’s under one LLC will save you money and time on taxes, accounting, logistics, and so forth. The only possibly downside I see is that if you were someday in the rare position of only wanting to sell off one portion of your business lines, it would perhaps be a task to fully separate the two.
If you have an ancillary service (perhaps WDO) that you think is particularly exposed to liability, you might want it in its own LLC, in case it gets sued.
For stuff you really want to protect, here is a strategy. Have it owned by an LLC in your state and then have that LLC’s lone member be a Wyoming LLC. Yes an LLC can be the sole member of another out-of-state LLC. The only remedy for a creditor in Wyoming is to wait for a sale or distribution. They can’t foreclose on the WY LLC, thus can never get to the LLC holding the asset. This is super overkill, though. Humility prevents me from revealing who came up with this strategy.