Forming a new Business in Louisiana LLC?????

[Benjamin Chadwick]

My wife and i are forming a new Real Estate Business in Louisiana, What is the best way to set up our business with the federal govt and state govt. Should we do a single member LLC a multi member LLC or something else. If anyone has any advice on how we should structure anything. We would appreciate your help. Thanks everyone.

[Robert Leonard]

Welcome to BP @Benjamin Chadwick! The two aspects to consider are matters of legal and tax considerations.  The reason the “right answer” is different for different people is we are all at different levels of assets we need to protect and we each have different strategies we pursue to work toward our investing goals.

These are not questions to answer here, but with your legal and tax/financial advisors.  What is your net worth? That’s what you need to strategy to protect.  What kind of income do you have and what will be the tax consequences of the different forms of income you expect to achieve through real estate investments? Do you and your wife own everything together or do either of you own separate property?  Taxes on fix and flip properties are very different from the taxes on buy and holds.  That’s why it almost always makes sense to do business in different entities with tax strategies that best fit each investment strategy.  

I realize these points are kind of all over the place and you didn’t mention these things. I’m mentioning these other things for the benefit of the reader who may have ideas beyond what you mentioned.  There are a lot of individual factors that make the “right” answer different for each of us.

I recommend you join NOREIA (New Orleans Real Estate Investors Association) to get connected with other local investors who can help you find good advisors who do a lot of work with real estate investors.  Lookup attorney David Birdsong.  He is local to you and is very active in working with investors.