I am considering starting a non franchise non-medical home health care business specializing in the elderly.
By filing for an LLC, you create a seperate legal "person" to do business through. You and your partners own stakes in this person, the controlling and voting degrees of which are decided by the nature of the filing agreement you file with the state. Also defined by the agreement are the bylaws and rules of the LLC, which give structure to your business beyond the laws and regulations already existing in the state covering all businesses. To give further clarity to the importance of an LLC in your situation, by filing an agreement, you establish person "A". Person "A" is responsible for all legal, financial and tax burdens. You are simply a stakeholder, equivelant to a shareholder. As such, your losses are finite, limited to real dollar value change of your stake. What's more, you personally can not be sued for the decisions of the LLC unless you, as an individual make them and the LLC is not the one being sued, in which case no business structure would protect you.
What license do I need and what type of liability insurance and/or bonding does it require? My business will offer meal preparation, house cleaning, assistance in ADLs, light yard maintenence, and transportation to social activities and medical visits.I would also include patient advocacy for medical visits. I am located in a rural area in Michigan and my "office" would me in my home.
Given the situation you have described, I can, in muct in good conciense reccomend one filing before all others. You must, for your own personal protection, file for an LLC. the benefits of an LLC aside, the legal protections it offers will be vital and essential to you in your business operations.
When conducting a legal enterprise dealing with the elderly, lawsuits are a simple fact of life. Even assuming that you manage to hire a staff of impeccable work ethic and preformance, and you somehow manage to operate without any accidents, you will still find yourself stuck in the middle of the kind of ugly estate law suits that plague the twilight years of many our senior citizens who have children. As such, the legal protections offered by an LLC will be essential in keeping your business secure and operating, as well as protecting you personally from the fray.
07 - Here are the licenses and tax ids you are legally required to obtain before starting business operations:
1. A business tax registration license
2. A DBA assumed business name
3. A federal tax id number if you are a partnership or you want to use it instead of you social security number to open a bank account.
Also, note that forming an llc or incorporating eliminates the requirement of getting a dba. It is a good idea to form an llc to avoid personal liability from business transactions.
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As I said before, let us assume for a moment that you and your staff operate exactly as intended. Even then you can be vulnerable for lawsuits. Let us say that one of your patients is checked in by one child. A legal battle ensues and another child siezes control of the patients affairs. Suddenly not only do they want to check the patient out, they want to recover all of the money that you were paid, as well as damages for percieved failures in treatement on your part. If you simply file for a DBA, they sue you personally, and not only are your business assets on the line, but your personal assets are in danger. But if you file for an LLC, then only the business assets are endangered. Your personal assets, profits and bank accounts are protected, and you can survive the lawsuit. Now, with potentially dozens, if not hundreds of patients, with dozens if not hundreds of children, these lawsuits become inevitable. And this is assuming that the impossible, that your staff be perfect and that no accidents take place, because if any do, no number of liability waivers or the like will protect you from a lawsuit. They will simply be so much paper.
Simply go to http://www.businessnameusa.com/services/fees.htm to determine your fees on a state by state basis.