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View Full Version : Starting a Greeting Card Company - What Bussiness Structure is Best?



sevenyears90@gmail.com
05-20-2014, 10:26 AM
Good morning all!

After 30+ years combined experience in the greeting card industry selling to Papyrus and American Greetings, my partner and I have decided to "go for it" and unlock ourselves from the shackles of big business. Enough poetic imagery though.

We had a quick question that we wanted to throw out for anyone to answer.

What Bussiness structure is ideal for a small greeting card business run by two people with an estimated first-year income of around $100,000?

Our Bussiness Needs:

We are not overly concerned with having "limited liability" at this point, as our overhead costs are relatively low and our initial credit will be minimal. However, it would be of interest to leave open the possibility of avoiding full-debt liability if possible, especially as we increase in size.
From a tax perspective, we would like the taxes to be as straightforward as possible, but would be willing to suffer a slight learning curve that pain would result in a benefit to the business and it's attractiveness to future credit lenders.
We only have two employees as of now, both of whom are co-founders, but we would like to leave open the option of easily hiring a paying employees.
In our first year, we will certainly be making under $100K.
We would like to take advantage of the maximum amount of tax exemptions and programs for small businesses.


Now before we are bludgeoned to death for asking such an "overly broad" question that we "should have been able to answer ourselves after doing a simple google search", I would like to note that we have done weeks of research into the forms of business. With this said, we would still like to get the opinion of those who had first hand experience in making this decision, in hopes that we can absorb some of their wisdom (or at least avoid sharing their failures).

We look forward to hearing back from everyone! Thanks!

vangogh
05-20-2014, 05:39 PM
Welcome to the forum sevenyears. My first thought is you might want to speak to an accountant because you have a number of tax questions.

The simplest business structure for you is a general partnership. It shouldn't be more than a form or two to fill out along with a small fee for filing. At tax time, the business fills out something to show how much it made and the distribution to each partner. Then each partner fills out personal income tax like always. The business will be able to take some deductions and each partner will be able to take some depending on how you each file.

If you're looking for the maximum exemptions you probably want to form some kind of corporation. However, the more you want to take advantage of exemptions the more complicated things will get so your 2nd and 5th points don't really go together.

As far as employees are concerned you can deal with that when the time comes. Any business structure will let you hire employees. Odds are when you get closer to that point you'll want to revisit these questions, but you can probably wait before asking and answering them.

I would start with the simple structure. There's going to be a lot to do to get the business started and going. Might as well keep some things simpler at first.

David Hunter
05-20-2014, 10:03 PM
I don't have answers to your tax questions... like Vangogh said, you may want to consult with an accountant.

Are you planning on having a storefront or will this be an online greeting card business?