Choosing the form of entity under which a business will operate is one of the first, and often the most important, decisions a business owner will make. Although the legal details underlying each entity type are inherently complex, exploring three major variables may help you determine which option is right for you: business control, owner liability, and tax implications.
The major business alternatives today include:
Sole Proprietorship
Partnership
C-Corporation
S-corporation
Limited Liability Company
The following comparison illustrates the most dramatic differences, and similarities, between several entity alternatives.
Sole Proprietorship. As its name implies, a sole proprietorship has a single owner, and is perhaps the most simplistic of all entity types. The main benefits of the sole proprietorship include its ease of implementation and lack of regulatory requirements. In addition, the sole proprietorship allows complete business control to a single business owner (proprietor). Under a sole proprietorship, the business owner is required to file a Schedule C (profit or loss from a business or profession) with their personal income tax filing. The proprietor personally assumes all liability and business risk, which can often be “transferred” through the purchase of liability insurance.
Partnership. The main difference between the sole proprietorship and the partnership is the number of business owners. Although quite easy to establish, it is a good idea to begin a partnership with a formal arrangement known as the partnership agreement. The partnership agreement sets forth the intent of the business owners in the event of a wide variety of business events such as the sale of the entire business, the sale of a single individual’s holdings or the disposition of ownership in the event of the death of a partner.
Like the sole proprietorship, the partnership represents a “flow-through entity” where both cash flows and tax liabilities flow through to the business owners. The partnership provides its owners minimal protection from business risk.
C-corporation. Though often costly and time-consuming to establish and maintain, the C-corporation provides the greatest amount of liability and business risk protection to the business owner(s). Strict governmental regulations outline company structure, reporting, and disclosure requirements.
Corporations have unlimited lives with ownership rights passing to designated heirs upon the death of an owner. The corporate entity also has a great deal of income tax flexibility and can offer the broadest array of tax deductible benefits, but may also trigger “double taxation” of some corporate profits as they are taxed at the corporate level as profits and again, potentially, at the individual level as taxable dividends are paid to shareholders.
S-Corporation. The “S Corp” functions as something of a hybrid, assuming many of the best features of several other entity types. The S Corporation is a legal entity that offers owners the benefits of greatly limited liability, while allowing company profits or losses to flow directly through to the business owners for income tax purposes, thus avoiding potential double taxation. The legal requirements and costs associated with starting an S Corporation are modest, as are the regulatory requirements. There are limitations on the number of owners within an S Corporation, and a C Corporation may not be an owner.
Limited Liability Company. Like the S Corporation, the Limited Liability Company (LLC) combines many of the benefits of other entity types. In contrast to the proprietorship and partnership, the LLC provides its owners (or members) with limited liability for the debt and business risk associated with ownership. The LLC also avoids the “double taxation” of the corporation by functioning as a “flow-through entity” for income tax purposes.
Selecting a business entity can be a complex decision with long-term effects on the ownership, owner liability and taxation of a business. Once you have prepared a business plan and evaluated your business ownership goals, consider seeking the advice of trusted financial professionals and advisors in finalizing your final selection of business entity.
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to