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2019-03-01

What is a Minimum Yearly Dollar Amount Needed to Sustain an LLC?

By Author Morgan Jassen

Today's question is, what is the minimum yearly dollar amount needed to sustain an LLC?

Spoiler alert: It's somewhere between: ("$800 per year"), and ("I don't know").

Some motivation behind asking this question is, of course, wanting to know from a money point-of-view, what it would take to become a small business owner -- own one's own business. 

This is a "minum viable" (so to speak) exercise, because much needs to be considered to start and own a small business.

Mostly based on my reading in "Start your Own Corporation"¹ book at this point, it seems like there would be at least $800 yearly of attorney's fees and registration fees. 

This is paraphrasing my understanding, and the book itself was giving an example scenario not a real case. But still it's a start. Also, what makes this "minimum viable" is that all money related to labor and other operations are not included in this estimate.

So, to sustain an LLC for a year, one would hypothetically have to pay $800, plus do the administrative work to keep the company's affairs in order throughout the year, plus work to produce the company's goods and/or service, for no pay, for so many hours per week, in order to keep the company running.

This is not to mention the "know how" needed to administer a company at this point! (Accounting, operations, legal matters, etc.) Newbies would have to learn as they go, on top of it all!

...Gee, no wonder it's important for a company to be/become/remain profitable. ...

The first things one might want to do once getting some money coming in, would probably be to use the revenue to cover the $800 yearly fees, followed by using the revenue to hire someone to help with the work of the administrative work and the goods/service production work. But that would be the next chapter in this story.

In summary, discounting spending many hours per week of free work, then the minimum yearly dollar amount needed to sustain an LLC might be: $800 per year. Encouraging!


¹ "Start your Own Corporation" [(book) : Sutton, Garrett] ( https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/3265606075_start_your_own_corporation )