It’s been a week!
Well, we’ve had our first full week of operation and paradoxically the major event was actually creating the legal corporate entity! That seems strange, but back in July I made the decision that the company should be a Professional Limited Liability Company (PLLC) which was the advice of the attorney because it should make practicing in other states easier. The initial form, fees and quarterly/annual reports are the same, the only difference is that all owners have to be licensed professionals as demonstrated by a form issued by the Secretary of the Commonwealth. This document can be requested only but contains a raised seal and so has to be mailed to the requesting person. Filing for a standard LLC can be done online, but because the application has to be accompanied by the document with the raised seal, PLLC filing has to be done either by mail or in person.
Well, I filed the Certificate Request Form online in early July and when I hadn’t seen it 2 weeks later I emailed and called the office, getting no response either time. So I then went down to the office, which is on the edge of Chinatown in Boston, and waited in a line reminiscent of the RMV (DMV do you outsiders) but which moved much more quickly. The person there was helpful, but they had no record of earlier request, so I went through the application process again and was told that the guy who does this was working from home that day. Ugh, but to be clear, I don’t begrudge a person for working at home! I do it and feel that anyone who can should have the chance to. Regardless, I go on about my day and wait another week watching the mail like a hawk, but still nothing. Fortunately I had gotten the email address of the helpful person I had worked with in person and a few hours after emailing him he responded to say that it was in the mail!
It showed up the following Thursday and I went immediately to 1 Ashburton Place on Beacon Hill and file the paperwork. There was no wait at the window and the application process went very quickly. It turns out I left my drivers license there and they mailed it back to me before I even realized it was gone.
Back at home I waited for the entity to be posted on the state (commonwealth) website, which is the sign that the process is well and truly done, and only a few hours later I found that “HINTERSPACE ARCHTRCTURE PLLC” had been created! Yeah! Wait, no, you read that right, they had included a typo in the word “ARCHITECTIRE”. Thinking quickly I emailed the office at an address found on their website and also contacted my attorney, then spent the evening wondering if the legal name of my new company was going to be permanently include this typo. Fortunately they made the change the next morning and all is well!
All in all it wasn’t a horrible process, and I’m grateful for the government employees who did their jobs in a very professional manner!
What I find to be really funny is that I’ve already gotten physical junk mail addressed to the company with the incorrect spelling! That typo was on the online database for about 18 hours tops, but some robot system flagged it as a new entity, and produced a mailing offering me real-looking, but definitely fake and not necessary, certificates of corporation. What a world.
