Does your Massachusetts LLC need an operating agreement?

While Massachusetts Limited Liability Company Act does not demand that your LLC have a formal operating agreement, it is generally a good idea to have one in place. The operating agreement serves many purposes and is flexible, so it can easily be tailored to meet your businesses specific needs.

As the name suggests, one of...

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Hobby Lobby and the corporate veil

In corporate law, there are few more important concepts than that of the "Corporate Veil." This is the concept that protects shareholders from unlimited liability for the debts of the corporation.

The corporate veil is what protects a small business owner's home and personal assets where they are also the sole corporate owner when their...

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Understanding when and how to restructure your business

Business owners are frequently faced with important decisions. From the very beginning, for example, owners will need to decide what type of business structure they will form under. This decision can have an impact on the day-to-day operations and growth of a young business. Even though one particular business structure might prove to be effective...
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The Covidien – Medtronic deal and the issue of ‘tax inversion’

The threads we've developed in this blog include various issues involving corporate taxes.

For example, late last month we discussed tax aspects of the Affordable Care Act as they apply to businesses.

In this post, we will take note of a tax issue involving the recent acquisition of a Massachusetts medical-device company by another such company...

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What responsibilities do businesses have under the Affordable Care Act?

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has frequently filled the national news with sound and fury.

The debate over the law itself overflowed with passion and partisanship. But Congress passed the law in 2010 and its key provisions were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court the following year.

Then, last fall, came the rocky rollout of the...

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Why is it important to plan for business succession?

If you are a small business owner, you may be so busy running your business that you haven't put a succession plan in place.

This lack of a plan is probably something you want to address After all, lack of a plan can make it difficult for a business to continue after something happens to...

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Streamlined tax exemption form could help many small nonprofits

This is a follow-up to a piece we did recently on setting up nonprofit corporations in Massachusetts. As we discussed in our March 19 post, the applicable law for setting up nonprofits and regulating them is primarily state law. But IRS regulations on tax-exempt status are also important. In this post, we...
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Nonprofits in Massachusetts: regulation and resources

St. Francis of Assisi didn’t need to incorporate a nonprofit when he found himself at the head of an emerging religious order. To be sure, even in medieval times there were ecclesiastical hoops to jump through for groups seeking to do good works without making a profit. But the forms of corporate organization have vastly...
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Businesses and Obamacare compliance: delays make for moving target

The implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been a moving target for businesses. The main milestones of the momentous law also known as Obamacare are probably familiar to most Americans by now. The political dustup over its passage in 2010 never really subsided, even after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the key provisions...
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Choosing a form for your business: the options have expanded

In the olden days - that is to say, as recently as the 1980s - people weighing their business-formation options had relatively few choices as to form.

The old standbys that had been there for decades were still pretty much the only game in town. There were corporations, partnerships, sole proprietorships - and not a...

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