The Lifecycle
Starting & Running an LLC
Forming, running, and dissolving an LLC, every step explained.
01
The LLC lifecycle: everything the company will need, in order
Naming it, forming it, feeding it, feeding the state, and eventually ending it. The plain map of every stage an LLC goes through, with the traps that catch owners and their own advisors at each one.
Starting the company
02
Naming your LLC: the trap nobody warns you about until it costs you
Picking a name your state accepts is the easy part. Keeping that name identical everywhere matters more than most owners, or their own lenders, realize, and the name that cleared your home state can still get blocked the day you expand.
03
Formation: what the filing actually creates
The articles decide less than owners assume. The management-structure box quietly touches unsettled self-employment tax law, and the series-LLC choice made at formation is often impossible to undo later without dissolving the company.
04
The EIN: the company's own tax identity
A free number from the IRS most LLCs should get even when the rules don't force it. Adding a partner can quietly require an entirely new one, and the box most owners never read on the application can hand a stranger standing authority over the company's tax account.
05
The registered agent: the person required to answer the door
Every state requires someone reachable to accept a lawsuit on the company's behalf. Using your own litigation counsel for that role can quietly create a conflict, and an agent's own resignation can start a real countdown clock toward dissolution even if the company did nothing wrong.
06
The operating agreement: the document this page won't teach you to write
Why it matters from day one. The successor a solo owner names can fail because the bank won't recognize the instrument, and separately, because the agreement never actually says who gets to decide the owner is incapacitated in the first place.
Running it
07
The bank account: where the wall actually gets built
Every legal protection an LLC offers depends on money never touching money. What most owners don't know is that opening the account requires a separate federal beneficial-ownership certification, and the bank's own default signing setup can quietly override what the operating agreement actually authorized.
08
Annual reports: the check-in that isn't a tax return
What this filing actually confirms, why a lapsed report can quietly stall a real estate closing months later, and why paying one of a state's two separate annual obligations doesn't mean the other one is covered.
09
Amendments: what happens when something about the company changes
A name change, a new agent, a new manager: each has to reach the state. A membership change can still end the partnership for tax purposes in a narrow surviving fact pattern, and a name change alone can quietly put a secured lender on a clock they don't know is running.
Growing and moving
10
Growing across state lines: when one state stops being enough
Registering to transact business, owing income tax, and collecting sales tax are three separate tests with three separate thresholds. And the mirror-image trap almost nobody plans for: forgetting to formally withdraw from a state after the business there has actually ended.
11
Redomestication: moving the company's actual legal home
Outgrowing your formation state is different from operating in a second one. Moving an LLC's legal home can accidentally trigger a partnership tax termination, and separately, can quietly blow up an existing S-corp election if nobody re-confirms it survives the move.
Ending it
12
Dissolution: ending on purpose
Why filing to formally close a company beats simply walking away. A narrow category of claims can outlive the claims bar entirely, and in a real set of states, dissolution itself can't even be filed until every state tax obligation is already cleared, turning a same-day plan into a months-long wait.
13
Reinstatement: coming back from the dead
State law can retroactively pretend the dissolution gap never happened. The IRS isn't automatically bound by that fiction, and when the dissolution happens in the middle of a lawsuit, real questions arise about whether the company could even be sued, or defend itself, during the gap at all.