If you’re a shareholder in a corporation, you have certain rights, and not just the right to receive a dividend or sell off your stock for money. Shareholders are, after all, essentially the owners of a corporation, and as an owner (or, at least, a part-owner), you’re entitled to have a say in how your company operates. However, not all these rights are obvious and may require you to do a little extra legwork to enforce them. Continue reading “Four Things You Need to Know as a Shareholder”
Tag: Business Attorney
What is a Business Merger?
Business is often seen as an adversarial activity, one where everyone competes for a slice of the economic pie. But sometimes you don’t want to beat the competition, you want to join them. Or, at the very least, you want to acquire their assets and resources to increase your own company’s growth potential. That’s when you start looking at the possibility of a merger. Continue reading “What is a Business Merger?”
What is Antitrust Law
Competition is an essential part of the American economy, as it drives companies to innovate, keeps prices down and helps to keep them honest. And while it’s generally a good thing when a business does well, sometimes a business does so well that it can potentially stifle competition, hurting the economy. It’s for this reason that antitrust laws were created: to preserve competition and protect consumers from the abuses that might arise in a non-competitive market. Continue reading “What is Antitrust Law”
Delaware Court Approves Shareholder Demand to See Facebook’s Books
The Delaware Chancery Court has recently approved a demand by Facebook’s shareholders to see their books and records. This demand, called a Section 220 demand, was filed as a means of examining potential wrongdoing by Facebook’s leadership during the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Cambridge Analytica (CA), a now-defunct political consulting firm, was accused of stealing the data of 50 million American Facebook users which it utilized to influence the 2016 United States Presidential Election. Continue reading “Delaware Court Approves Shareholder Demand to See Facebook’s Books”
The Danger of Double Taxation
Oftentimes, when people are discussing corporate taxation, one of the things they’ll refer to is “double taxation,” and how unfair it is. The term may be confusing for people unfamiliar with the tax code, who wonder how it is that corporations can be taxed twice. However, it’s not as complicated as it sounds, and understanding double taxation can make a big difference when deciding how to organize your business.
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Dissolving a Limited Liability Company in New York
A Limited Liability Company (LLC) is one of the many business entities that one can form in New York. An LLC is defined as a company that combines elements of a partnership, sole proprietorship, and a corporation. In this type of business structure, the owners, or members, are generally not personally liable for the LLC’s losses and lawsuits.
Operating an LLC may not always go as planned. If you no longer wish to operate your business under the LLC, you may dissolve it. However, it is necessary to properly and officially dissolve the LLC in the State of New York. Failure to properly dissolve the business entity can lead to legal complications and monetary penalties.
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Why Incorporate?
Even though corporations are an omnipresent part of day-to-day life in the modern world, many people don’t know what a corporation is, or why someone would want to incorporate their business in the first place.
A corporation put simply, is a legal entity that exists independently of the people who own and run it. Due to what is known as “the legal fiction of corporate personhood,” corporations are treated as legal “persons” for a variety of purposes, most significantly for the purposes of legal and financial liability. In other words, when a business loses money or gets sued, it would normally be the business’ owner or owners that are held responsible for paying off the business’ debts or paying for any legal judgments. However, when a business is incorporated, those losses and judgments are generally incurred by the corporation, not the owners, and so the owners generally aren’t held responsible if the company can’t pay for everything and goes bankrupt.
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New Tax Law Cracks Down on Entertainment Expenses for Businesses
Newsmax Finance
reported on a little-known item in the new tax law that will do away with special interest tax breaks and loopholes, among them the elimination of a company’s ability to write off entertainment as part of its business expenses. Continue reading “New Tax Law Cracks Down on Entertainment Expenses for Businesses”
NYS May Impose Taxes on Pass-Through Businesses
The New York State Department of Taxation issued a report for the governor’s office detailing options to raise revenues for the state. One of the options the agency suggested was to impose taxes on “pass-through” businesses.
A “pass-through business” is a company in which income is generated through profits from a partnership. Under the new federal tax law, state and local deductions are limited to $10,000, but any taxes paid in operating a company at the entity level continues to be considered as a business expense, and, as such, can be written off. According to the Brookings Institution, approximately 95% of U.S. businesses are “pass-throughs.” Continue reading “NYS May Impose Taxes on Pass-Through Businesses”
New York City Sues Verizon in Contract Dispute
New York City’s continued wait for access to Verizon’s FiOS service has resulted in a lawsuit. Verizon promised the city in a 2008 contract to provide access to its fiber-optic FiOS service to all New York City residents by the year 2014. Three years later, Verizon has not come close to meeting the goal. The original contract was agreed upon by the parties in order to provide New York City residents more options for receiving affordable cable television service. Continue reading “New York City Sues Verizon in Contract Dispute”
