Business Formation
There are three main documents that shape a business entity’s activities:
- the Articles of Incorporation, for official recognition from the state government as an operating business entity;
- the Operating Agreement, which structures the ownership and organization of personnel, as well as the financial constitution of the business, including where funding is coming from and where profits are going to; and,
- the Business Plan, which is a loose term for the detailed operational planning that answers the question, “How is this business going to output products/services and input profitable revenue?”
The state index on this page links to each state’s governing authority on business formation and formal registration. Every business must file an Articles of Incorporation (or equivalent) document with the single governing authority in each state responsible for overseeing that state’s business registration procedure. The Articles of Incorporation is a mostly conventional document used most predominantly to record basic fundamental formation data about new businesses and who is causing them to be formed. Straightforward (usually) annual reports are also (usually) required for regular administrative maintenance at a (usually) flat fee.
State-by-state Index of Official LLC Filing Authorities
The average cost of registering a new llc with the appropriate state department by filing an entity’s Articles of Incorporation (or equivalent) as of 29 November 2021 = $123.58 USD
LOPSIII commercial activity and ideology interpenetrates each of the three main documents that governs business activity. Regarding the Articles of Incorporation, LOPSIII entities must be registered where the majority of the ownership resides, a critical distinction that prevents that excessive extraction of financial profits from a locality or jurisdiction. In terms of the Operating Agreement, many factors must be considered to ensure that capital flows through the business and community in a healthy and sustainable way, such as the constant distributions from the Local Fund and the absence of tightly coupled and fixed wages. And at the level of the Business Plan, LOPSIII ideology ensures an ethical outlook on the provision of products and services that is divorced from the profit-maximization motive and focused on sustainability and sufficiency rather than unrelenting optimization.
The registration of a business through its Articles of Incorporation is predominantly constrained to a limited set of submission criteria, but it is nonetheless critical that a new entity’s Owners and Members exercise consideration in the formation of their business to ensure that they participate in the for-profit economy ethically. Otherwise, businesses simply continue on contributing to the economic fracturing that is inherent in capitalism-as-usual and that rips apart the social fabric of The Land of the Free and makes impossible the infrastructural delivery of the high quality of life that this nation so proudly boasts.
LOPSIII 