 programs to ensure first small businesses and their employees remain at the heart of San Francisco's cultural and economic well being small businesses make up nine out of 10 San Francisco businesses employ more than half of our city's workforce and generate tens of billions in economic activity each year, small business owners and their employees have been among the worst impacted by the pandemic as we all know. Now, there's so much more work that needs to be done, but I do hope that you've seen through our work together throughout the pandemic and beyond that the city is here to serve and support you. Small businesses have benefited from more than $63 million in grants and loans, over 3000 small businesses benefiting from that, including their employees. In addition to tens of millions of dollars in tax and fee deferrals, assistance in advocating and applying for state and federal funding and assistance in deferring approximately 46 million in business registration fees for 100,000 businesses deferred business taxes for 20,000 businesses and giving 19,000 businesses additional time to pay roughly $16 million in fees. So in my role as assessor recorder, I just want to express my deep appreciation and support for you, small business entrepreneurs, small businesses are and have been an essential focus of our recovery. And I want you to know that you can count on San Francisco to be a resource at every step of your journey as small business owners. I'm just going to go through a few slides with my colleague Martin is who is from the office of small business and extraordinary advocate as many of you know, to guide you on the pathway to starting your small business so before we get to that I want to provide some information about the business personal property tax communication that you may get from our office and important property tax dates to keep in mind throughout the year so you're not surprised. So let's get started. Next slide please. Just a bit of general information on the roles and responsibilities of my office I'll go over, then I'll dive right into the business personal property tax overview, including some of the frequently asked questions that we receive and also how to apply those to your business. So some of the information can be overwhelming there's a density of it, but overall, what I want you to take away is that you are aware that these might be impacting you as a business owner, and that you know that there's an assessor recorder an office who could be responsive to you to answer any of your questions. So, when it comes to those to the bill itself, those questions can be answered by our colleagues at the treasure and tax collectors office. So just a general overview, our office primary responsibility is really broken down into three main activities. I have a staff of 174 people, public servants who assess property values all real property in the city and county of San Francisco we also collect transfer tax. And we are responsible for advancing the single most stable and secure source of revenue of general fund dollars that pay for your most fundamental services from parks to roads, other areas of infrastructure, emergency services, schools, clean air and Bay Area Rapid Transit Bart. We also grant property tax exemptions, as well as record public documents like marriage certificates. Next slide please. So, just by the numbers we on the assessor side look at about 211,000 real estate parcels. The land, the improvements or buildings on top of them, and about 37,000 business personal property accounts that make up what we call the assessment role. All that property has value, and that's what we assess annually, and then we apply exclusions and exemptions that are required by state law. So there's about $328 billion of value in San Francisco, and that means about $3.7 billion in annual property tax revenues for fundamental services that I just mentioned. In addition to fairly assessing those properties. We also apply all the exemptions, there's about $20 billion of exemptions that are applied. There's about $230 million in property tax savings for homeowners for churches, schools, museums, affordable housing projects charitable organizations and disabled veterans. So every July we mail out our notice of assess values, which includes those exemption values. So, if you are a homeowner please make sure you review that when you receive it to make sure the information is correct. We do not reach out immediately to our office. Next on the recorder side as I mentioned we're responsible for recording over 200 types of documents, about 150,000 a year. Those include things like deeds of trust lean related documents, mortgages, public documents like marriage certificates that I mentioned which is the most, I think accessible to everyone. The department records that we have. We also collect those transfer taxes on this side of the house and fees on the recorded documents that we process. We collected about $345 million in transfer tax in fiscal year 2020 and 2021, which was an increase better than projections had anticipated. For example, very large transactions were taking place in the city, such as what you may have read about in the paper the Dropbox sale that took place, that large transaction meant quite a bit in transfer tax dollars for the city and county. In that case about $65 million. So, still in the midst of the pandemic and economic impacts, there are still transactions taking place that have an impact on how we can better service San Francisco because the dollars that we collect. We interact with businesses in a variety of ways. And most importantly, what does it mean for you. So as a new registered business, one of the first pieces of communication that you're going to receive from the city is a notice from my office to file the business property statement. The business property statement form 571 L the office then of the treasurer and tax collector will share your business, business registration information with our office. And then after receiving your business registration information from from them will generate an account for you on account number and a pin and mail you a notice of requirement to file that form that I just mentioned. You can normally receive that in February, so that you can declare all of your accessible business property that situated in the county, which you owned claimed possessed controlled or managed as of the tax lien date. Next slide please. So business personal property. What is it. It's all the property owned or leased by a business with the exception of real property. The business personal property division of the office assesses property owned by businesses and conducts audits that are mandated by the state. So businesses in the city are required by California state law to annually file these business property statements, which identifies the acquisition cost of your business personal property, and the improvements, leasehold improvements, tenant improvements, trade fixtures, etc. So businesses in the assessor's office and are responsible ultimately for the taxes on that property. As I mentioned earlier there's about $228 million in revenue for the city that we collected just last year. So what are the common types of BPP I've mentioned some of them next slide please. You know, laundry, you know, washing machine stove refrigerator, your office furniture desk tables chairs equipment meaning telephones computers supplies like stationary some cleaning supplies fixtures plumbing and wiring so there's a lot to document and a lot to keep track of as part of this process. Next slide please. So we hear some common types of property that are not considered business personal property and don't have to be reported and I know this is a lot coming at you but it's just to give you a sense of what to be on the lookout for once you receive that notice to file. So some of those items that are not included include business inventory. So clothing or food that you intend to sell intangible assets, what are those like application software patents liquor licenses. Home furnishing, if you use your home as your workplace, the portion of your home that is not used in connection with your business is not considered BPP. So very specific parameters there as well. So DMV license vehicles delivery truck company car or food truck interestingly. Next slide please. So how is be the business personal property BPP bill calculated. It's fairly straightforward. It's using the information that you report on your statement. So we determine the assess value and then we multiply it by the current fiscal year's tax rate. So for example, if your business personal property assess value is $150,000, we multiply that amount by in this case 1.1825%, which is the rate for the lean year of 2022. And the tax bill for this scenario would then be about $2,737 and 50 cents. So pretty pretty straightforward once everything is added up. Next slide please. So, there's a lot of questions that come up as a small business owner and again I know this is a lot. Let's go over maybe for frequently asked questions that we have all the equipment I use in my business. Well, it was just given to me. How do I report that. Well, on your BPP statement, you provide a description that includes the make the model and the general condition of each piece of equipment. And that helps us determine the value there. It's required to file the form 571L. Well, when you receive a notice of requirement to file from from us from the office of the assessor recorder, or when you have taxable business personal property with a total cost of $100,000 or more. So just a couple of things to look out that will be sending you something when the determination has been made. But also be aware that when you have that property that's with a total cost more than $100,000, give or take and you recognize that you should be expecting that you will be required to file. Next slide please. So another question is, I've just established my business, I don't own much business personal property is probably less than $100,000. Do I need to file. Well, the answer there is yes, because your business is newly established, you'll need to do a first time filing. So businesses with less than $4,000 in personal in business property value. You're going to receive a low exemption a low value exemption notice low value exempt account holders are generally sole proprietors with very few business assets. So again I know there's a lot of layers here, but just want to share some of the highest ones with you. What if I disagree with the assessed value notice that I've received contact us contact us, please always if you have any questions, reach out to our office, an audit appraiser is available Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm. There's an email that will put in the chat, which is ASK BPP at SF GOV dot org. That's ASK BPP at SF gov dot org, or you can call us 554 5531 will also put that in the chat for you. So if you just are walking down the street and you suddenly have a question that you don't have a pen and paper, we want to write it down you want to reach someone quickly. What was that number what was that email, just call 311 and say you have a question about this and ask them to be connected for you to be connected with our office. Now, you also have a more formal right to appeal the assessment with the assessment appeals board. Now, one important thing to note is that not agreeing does not exempt you from paying your property taxes. Do because the assessment of your property is deemed valid by law until it's change is made by the assessor or by the assessment appeals board. Some of you may have had that experience, maybe filing personal taxes with the IRS had a disagreement, maybe something went wrong with the paperwork. Whoops, you're still on the hook for not only that base amount, but also the penalties and interest at a crew until you take care of that ultimate bill as you work through the process so just please be sure that you're proactive about this so that you don't have to worry about those issues in the future. And remember, you are not exempt from paying your property taxes, even if you disagree. Once the resolution has been met, then there will be a refund provided to you. Next slide please. So, you've heard me talk about some of the dates in here. I hear some of the important ones, the lean date that I mentioned, when we look at the value of your property is as of that lean date on an annual basis, January 1, the first date of the year. Or the date of valuation of the property. For February, the business personal property notices are sent to business owners. April 1 deadline to file that form that I mentioned. Again, April 1 so that's something that's passed for folks, but please be aware of that. May 7 is the last day that you may file without penalty. So that's coming up very quickly. So if you are required to file, you have questions about filing, reach out right now to make sure that you meet your deadline so that you are not penalized for a late filing. And then in July, the treasurer and tax collector will send you that tax bill. And then the second of July is the first day that you can file an appeal. Your deadlines, August 31 is a deadline to pay the bill to the treasurer and tax collector, and then September 15 is a deadline to file an assessment appeal. So today it's just good to keep in mind, but always remember, please be proactive. You are on the hook for those property taxes, even if you disagree. So please do make sure that you take care of those upfront as you are able, so you are not penalized in the future, as you work through the process of appeal. Next slide please. There's also an e-file access tool. One of the things we're doing in the office is updating our systems, very old systems, and it's a constant process to make it easier for you. There's still a lot of work left to be done in this area, but I'm very grateful to my predecessor, Carmen Chu, for what she started. It's a convenient way for business owners to file their business personal, their business property statement. So you can go to our website, sfassessor.org, use our e-file portal to submit your statement. And then please refer to your annual notice for your account property numbers and access pin that'll make it easier in your e-filing process. Again, on that notice that you receive your property, your account and property numbers, and your access pin so that you have that ease when you go to e-file. Next slide please. So as I mentioned, very friendly staff, they're ready to, ready to assist you. You can visit us in person at City Hall, Room 190, Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm. You just, if there's no line, you can walk right up to the counter. If there is, you just go to the kiosk, push a number, and your number will be called in the order that you came in. You can always speak to a specialist by phone. You can call us again at that number 554-5531, if you forget, 311. And you can email us as well, ASKBPP at sfgov.org. Our website also includes so much information, so many frequently asked questions. I do recommend you take some time to go over that in relationship to your very specific questions, whether you are a homeowner, whether you are specifically focused on business personal property, take advantage on the resource guides that we put up. Not every county does that what we do in San Francisco. Next slide please. So I just want to say thank you. There's an example of property tax for business owners are information sheets. I hope this demystify just a touch the business personal property tax and the role of my office plays in that. Again, you have our contact info in the link. I mean in the chat section here with a link to our BPP fact sheet that you see here in the chat so you can have that for your records more easily. And that concludes my presentation. I'm very, very happy to pass over the microphone to the one and only Martha Yanis, who is an extraordinary advocate for small businesses here in the city and county. Not only pre pandemic, but like all of us survived the pandemic by providing so much time, equity and effort in making sure the small business communities were served. Martha, thank you so much for your service we're lucky to have you. Thank you. Nice to see you. Hello, everyone. So I wanted to ask, do you want to take some questions now because I don't know if you're planning to stay on the rest of the presentation or not. It's up to you. I saw there was a couple in the chat for your part of the presentation. You're muted. If not, I can, I can go forward. Um, so. Yeah, this. Christie, do you think we want to take some questions now from the assessor. No, it's up to you. Maybe we should. Yeah. We can unmute him. Just don't want him hanging around for my presentation if he doesn't have to have other things to do. Or we can also follow up with folks. And who can unmute him. Christie, anybody like for his. Oh, we'd have to find out. Yeah, there's a lot of people on this. We'll just. Thank you everybody for your patience. Okay, great. I'm I'm muted. Thank you so much. Thanks Martha. One of the questions was why don't we scrap business personal property tax. That's a conversation for the state of California, but billionaires with property are taxed. So there are a lot of properties that are here in the city and county of San Francisco that are taxed. We also have programs and partnerships with the Board of Equalization to make sure that some of the LLC work that's done does not go unnoticed. That's an audit program. It's already brought in tens of millions of dollars since we began that program. So I take that very seriously and thank you for the question. But I'm also very grateful for the hundreds of millions of dollars that we receive through business personal property. It's an exceptional unit run by Tom Swirk and his team. Does it apply to home based businesses. Yes, it does so please do reach out to our office so you can understand the intricacies of business personal property as I mentioned what is and is not covered as part of the BPP in relationship to your home based business. Jerry with regards to your application will you please reach out to our office directly so we can go through where you are in the process in terms of you receiving a notice for your, your notice to file. Will this recording be emailed. Yes it will fill up. Thank you. All right, I think that's it. Thank you so much Martha I really appreciate it. So, so we'll continue with my part of this presentation so as you know the presentation is starting a business in San Francisco. So it's for starters I my name is Martha youngest and I work as office business. We are inside City Hall as well our office is in room 140 within the tax collector's office and so basically what our office is set up to do is really be a central point for small business information and assistance for people wanting to start a business in San Francisco or existing small businesses that already operate in San Francisco so we like to consider ourselves the first place that you should come for all questions small business and we define small business in San Francisco with less than 100 employees. So as assessor Torres had mentioned, out of 10 of our businesses are businesses by that definition. The majority of our businesses are are small here in the city and contribute a lot to our office or to our city so back when our office was created we run a small business assistant center at City Hall where you can drop in. So right now we're open five days a week back open five days a week but we are limited in staff so you might only encounter one person there so it's best to make an appointment if you are coming down. Otherwise we really try to make ourselves really available to you and accessible so you can always call or email our office and I'll have my contact info on my presentation that I'll put up in just a little bit but the idea is that if you're a small business, somebody who wants to start business in San Francisco or an existing business, you have questions of your filing or you wanted one of our business case managers and we can give you a checklist which you'll see when I pull up my presentation, kind of what that looks like our services are really customized based on kind of what you're doing. So this type of business will outline what's going to be required and kind of the steps in the order that you need to do things in, and we always will continue to be there for you. As you, you know, first start your business but maybe are growing your business you have other questions maybe later you're looking to hire employees you might have some follow up questions with regard to employment laws that you need to know about anything related to business related as someone doing business here, keep our information handy come on down visit us call us email us, etc. That's kind of our bread and butter we also do not provide some services ourselves so one of the things that we like to encourage people to do as they're looking to start a business in the city is hopefully take some entrepreneurship training programs, develop a business plan. We encourage people to take the time to really research the type of business that they're doing and go and get some assistance so we don't provide that service ourselves in house but we do have a great network of organizations here in San Francisco that do provide a lot of that technical assistance and training. A lot of those services are free so the great thing about San Francisco is a lot of people do complain. It's going to be harder to do business here it's more expensive to do business here, but at the same time San Francisco there is no other city that I know of that provides as many resources to small businesses that want to start up in San Francisco as San Francisco does we're often getting calls from a lot of other places or people in choir and do you know if there's a similar office to your office in Oakland or LA or other places and so that's one thing that I can share with you that San Francisco does do a really good effort at supporting small businesses that work here and in fact back when our office started in 2008 we opened up our assistant center at City Hall. At the time, San Francisco was passing laws that were ultimately going to impact small business owners one of them being the health care security ordinance so well before the state or the federal government had a mandate to provide health care for employees, San Francisco was passing a law or employers of 20 or more employees to provide health coverage to their employees. We also have the paid sick leave ordinance so well before the state passed the health sick leave. I'm sorry the paid sick leave ordinance, San Francisco was passing a law that required businesses to provide pay time off to their employees and so understanding that you know San Francisco requests and asks a lot on the back of small businesses. We wanted to have this assistant center where you can come in and get support and assistance from the city as well so that's a little background about our office. But again I'm going to go ahead and share my presentation. So this is going to be an overview of kind of the general requirements needed to do business in San Francisco. There's going to be some basic requirements of anyone that does business in San Francisco, and then some potential additional requirements based on your specific type of business that you do. So, this is my presentation which again we will be sharing with everyone who's on this call today. This is my contact information here and our office information on this front first slide here. So, a little bit about us. We are all a division with the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, and we are also overseen by a small business commission. This small business commission is a seven member body that's appointed by the mayor and the Board of Supervisors, and they meet regularly at City Hall to review policy and law legislation that's being introduced by the mayor or the Board of Supervisors that might ultimately impact small businesses that operate in San Francisco. This small business commission, which is a voluntary group of seven. It's usually small business owners themselves or somehow work with the small business community. They meet regularly to review that policy or law that's being introduced by the Board of the Mayor, or sometimes departments as well that might ultimately impact small businesses that operate here and they make recommendations on that policy and law. We can follow their meetings. If you visit our website which again my contact info is on the front here, including our website or yeah. You can find when they meet, but again we are located inside City Hall. We like to consider ourselves a central point for small business information. We do provide one on one case management assistance. We provide services in English, Spanish, Cantonese and Mandarin by ourselves, case managers such as myself and my colleague and other languages are available using language line interpretation services. And we also manage the San Francisco business portal so some of you might have already visited our business portal it is an online presence that we have that you can access 24 seven that provides assistance or provides information on, on doing business and starting a business in San Francisco I would also encourage you to visit that, but we are on the backside of that we answer questions with respect to people that are answering that are asking questions on that portal. Additional services offered. Thank you one of the first things that you have to do when you think about starting a business in San Francisco besides again, you know, developing a business plan and working with someone to help you develop a business plan or taking some business classes. One of the first decisions that you'll have to make is how to set up your business. So you might have heard of sole proprietor versus a general partnership versus a corporation versus an LLC. There are all different types of business entity structures and so we do provide a general overview of the various types of business structures but ultimately, it is a conversation that you'll likely want to have with a tax professional and or a business lawyer, but we do provide a general overview and I'll have an entity comparison table a little bit further in the, in the presentation that we can review real quick. We also provide that checklist customized checklist of requirements for starting your business here so again our services are really customized to particularly what you're doing, kind of about what stage you're at with what you're doing. Maybe like I said you'll you'll need to take some classes and work on developing a business plan or maybe you've already, you're coming to by the time that you come to us you've always signed your lease and just need to get going then we can help you really at whatever stage you're at but making sure that you are aware of resources that are available that can continue to help you grow your business. We all to provide information and assistance with a lot of the. So, if you do decide on creating an LLC or corporation, we can guide you in terms of the steps to do that. We all to provide information obviously with respect to the San Francisco requirements so anyone doing business in San Francisco will have to have a business registration. And we assist with that filing as well as answering questions about renewal. Actually, this month on May is the month that all businesses that are already registered in the city are renewing their registration. The renewal needs to happen by the last day of May. And so we also provide information on when it's time to renew we provide assistance with renewals. We also provide assistance with paying your license fees so some businesses will also have operational licenses to do to operate here in the city. And so we also provide assistance with that and making updates to your account. We also provide a process to file a fictitious business name and I'll cover that a little bit more and explain what that is. I know I'm kind of covering a lot right now, but once I show you the checklist, some of them come a little bit more clear and we can go through them a little bit more in detail. So yeah, basically a fictitious business name is, is something that is required. If you are doing business under a name that's not your legal name. So we provide provide assistance with that filing as well with the city. And we also figuring out what other permits and licenses are required, but and also in some cases helping you file and apply for those additional regulatory license from others, the city, mostly state agencies as well. We also provide assistance with helping you check the zoning and the land use so anytime somebody is going to be starting a business that's going to require them to lease commercial property here in the city to run their business. We always encourage you that you never ever ever sign a lease before you first consult and check the zoning of that property. A lot of times people do come to us after the fact they've already signed a lease and then they come to find out that they need special permits to be able to operate their business in that space so we want to catch you before that happens. And we want to help you confirm that the zoning permits the use. So we do that we provide assistance that we rely also on our colleagues at some of our other city departments to help with some of this as well. But we've gotten pretty good at looking at the zoning control tables and kind of giving you a sense of whether your particular type of business is allowed in that space or not. So we provide that type of a service we also review accessibility laws and considerations so again for those of you who might be looking to lease commercial property to run your business out of. You want to be mindful that there are accessibility laws. So your place generally has to be accessible to people with disabilities. Otherwise you can run the risk of being sued. And so we provide an overview of some of those laws and important considerations to consider as you're looking at a particular property. Sometimes we'll pull up Google map at the property with you and give you some information and assistance and there's also other other organizations or folks who can assist you better assess a specific location. I could talk a little bit more about that. Again, also, we also provide assistance with if you're wanting to do business with the city, you do have to be registered as a city vendor supplier. And so we provide some assistance and guidance with that process also becoming a local business enterprise. The city has a local business enterprise certification. So if you are based in San Francisco. It's your principal place of business then you can get certified as a local business and the city when they issue contracts. They indicate that they all give a preference to a business who's local. So with that process as well we provide review of city labor laws and compliance so like I mentioned earlier the cities paid paid sick leave ordinance. We have the minimum wage higher here in San Francisco then the state. So have the health care security ordinance some of these apply, whether you have one employee or some others apply once you have five or one piece to provide some guidance with respect to our city labor laws. And then we also do the referral to technical assistance provider so basically anything that we can't assist you with such as business planning, business training, business advising, looking at your financial set sort of stuff we rely on a network of organizations that we can refer you to including legal organization so if you need someone to help you review a lease or a contract, there are legal organizations as well that you can avail yourself up for free or low cost and we can provide you referral and information about those providers that are available on many of them like I said free available to you. And then we also provide information on city programs and funding options so as assessor Torres had mentioned the city has had a number of programs available during the whole pandemic grant programs loan programs both local state and federal and our office has really been getting the information out about all of those various programs, many who have, you know come and gone so right now, we only have a couple of grant programs through the city that I'll also mentioned towards the end. But one thing that I would encourage you to do is to subscribe to our newsletter, our newsletter is going to be the best way to stay informed of any new programming that that the city will have available. Sometimes we'll to find out about other state programs. There was a state grant. It's available in pandemic. And so yeah our office has been getting out information about various programs, and there's others not just during the pandemic but we have, for instance, jobs now around for more than 10 years. The program started. The last economic downturn. The city was trying to get people residents back to work and so was helping to pay the wages of employees for employers whose jobs now program. So that's just another example of city programs at our office informs businesses about But going forward, this next slide is just a quick overview of kind of the steps on starting a business. So one, work on creating a business plan. People we find that people who do take the time to create a business plan and take training are going to be more successful in their business because they've actually been able to think about their business and plan it out looking at financials expenses, etc. So it is really good exercise and there's tools that you can access online as well but there's also the nonprofit partners that we we can refer you to that provides some training. For instance, one organization is called Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center. They have a 12 week business planning class that you can sign up for. That's just one example we have others and at the end of our slide, we will have a list of resources. We want to again think about your business structure, secure financing file your articles of organization, if applicable if you're going that route, obtain an employee identification number again if applicable and I'll talk about that a little bit more. Register your business with San Francisco. So that's one thing anybody doing business in San Francisco must be registered with the city. Sometimes if you're not forming an LLC or corporation you won't need to file your articles file a fictitious business name, obtain and obtain other permits and licenses if applicable and comply. Basically say compliant make sure that you're renewing your, your registration you're staying on top of your business property statement as assessor Torres had mentioned. So, the next slide and my presentation is an entity comparison table and hope you guys can see this okay it's a little small but basically this is just to provide you a visual of the various organization structures that there are to choose from I mentioned, so proprietor, limited partnership, corporation, limited liability company. So, rule of thumb here is the less your businesses and the less you have to lose the more you might be able to operate as a solar. But if there's more risk in your business and you have personal assets, then you might want to consider a more formal type of business structure, such as a limited liability company or an S corporation those are the two more common ones that we see for small businesses who are concerned about risk and liability. So again, it's a conversation really that you want to have with a tax professional and a business lawyer, because ultimately, you can be tax different. If you organize a sole proprietorship, you're basically reporting any income from your business on your personal tax, your tax filings. However, if your corporation or LLC you may have separate tax filing so we don't provide that type of guidance through our webinar, but we can refer you to organizations that you can, where you can get more information there's also a lot of information online. But this is ultimately one of the first decisions that you're going to make before you start registering your business, because when you begin or want to start registering your business, you'll start to see the applications will ask you okay what type of organization are you who registered. The way that I like to explain this or to think about this is that a sole proprietor base to the individual. There is no separation between if you're a sole proprietor so you are personally liable. Whereas with the LLC or corporation you're, you're separating yourself from the business you're almost creating like a separate entity that's going to exist separate from you. I would like to suggest that people think of these almost like a person, and you might have heard of corporations refer to as as a person. It is good just to think about it in that way because I think it makes it easier to to when you're filing forms, etc. So, when you, if you're going to form an LLC or corporation, you will need to come up with a name for that entity, and have its own tax number so for individuals, we have our legal name and we have our user social security number, or if we cannot get a social security number some of us might have an individual taxpayer ID number. So the corporation and the LLC it's going to have its own legal name you're going to basically create it, and then you're going to request a tax number for that entity. So again this entity comparison table just looks at some of the characteristics. The big difference here is that sole proprietors, no state filing require corporations and LLCs are required to file with the state so that's going to be one of your first steps is to create your entity with the state so I'm going to go forward here and get to our checklist. And I know I'm going fast what I'll say is that directly one on one happy to schedule appointments, talk to you by phone on your specific situation or help answer any questions and it will leave some time at the end to help answer some questions as well. So, this is our checklist that we use. If you were to come in, or to guide our conversation with you. The first page on the left, I'm going to see if I could zoom in here. Okay, so the first box on the top left you'll see says zoning and we put this front and center only because for those of you who are going to be leasing commercial property we don't want you to miss this step. We want to ensure that you are confirming the zoning before you sign in that lease. Otherwise, the next box, and we can go back to that a little bit, but the next box essentially is where for those of you who will create your first step is going to be here in this box on the left that says corporation LLC LLP filing. This is done with the California Secretary of State. There's an online filing that you can do on that website so the idea with these boxes is that you know it's got the agency name and their contact info their website where you can do a lot of these filings there's information here on the right of this box that talks a little bit about the fees that you'll be required to pay so for those of you forming or organizing a LLC the initial filing fee is going to be $70. For those of you looking to organize create a corporation the initial filing fee will be $100. There's also another form that needs to be filed within 90 days of filing your original articles of organization or articles of incorporation. The statement of information that's what this si stands for, and the statement of information for the LLC is $20 $25 for the corporation. And then also the big fee with having a corporation or an LLC is that they must pay an annual minimum annual $800 tax to the franchise tax board. That you want to consider I find oftentimes people come in, because maybe their friend or their cousin somebody told them, oh yeah go you need an LLC you should operate as an LLC. Maybe that works for them, it might not be necessary for you, and a lot of times they don't factor in the fact that there is this minimum $800 tax that is due. The minimum $800 is due within the first four months of forming your LLC or corporation. So I know your LLC corporations have always had their first year tax waived. More recently, because of the pandemic Governor Newsom signed a bill that is on waving the first year LLC fee. So somebody who's forming an LLC this month in May normally their $800 would have been due to enjoy August by August 15. In this case, they that $800 won't be due until April of next year. So that's a good thing. But, but that is something to consider and there's just also more formalities with having an LLC and a corporation that you don't have with the sole proprietor so you will need to again file that statement of information. Other year so if you're organizing your LLC or corporation this year in 2022 statement of information will be due within the first 90 days but then also every even year. And so just more maintenance that you'll want to stay on top of one thing that I will say is that during the pandemic when people businesses were looking for financing and applying for grants and loans. One thing that we discovered is that a lot of folks, their LLC was or their corporation was not in good standing with the state because they had failed to file. And so they unfortunately were not eligible for some of that funding, or another thing that we encountered is sometimes that they were registered with the city didn't match the fact that they had created an LLC so what often happens is, if you initially started out as a sole proprietor with the city, you could convert to a more formal type of business structure such as an LLC or corporation in the future, what you would need to do at that point is you know first create your LLC or corporation and then return to San Francisco and close out your sole proprietorship account and then re register under the LLC or the corporation and that doesn't happen. Sometimes people know, you know, my tax person suggested or maybe they even created the LLC or tax or corporation for them, but then they failed to make any changes to their San Francisco so you definitely always want to be on top of your filings and making sure that they match, because that could affect your being able to get loans or grants in the future. So, if you're going that route. That would be your first step is you have to basically essentially create your LLC or corporation you're going to give it a name. We do encourage you to search the name that you come up with your corporation corporation or LLC and we give you a couple of websites here that you should search for the name. So, you know, you don't want to file anything the same or two similar, particularly if it's in the same line of business. And in the same area that could be rejected one but also you could be infringing on somebody else's name rights, and they might end up sending you a letter to these indices so the more that you can stay away from anything too similar. So that's in the same area that better. But so that's your first dance search for the name confirm it's available and go about filing these forms with the state. The state usually will take about their processing times vary. They have information on their website about their processing times. And just to show you, let's see if I could switch over to their website. This is the California Secretary of State. And they now have a new online filing system that you would file. If you click here. Let's see, actually. Yeah, if you click here for the name here and again this website is on my checklist. So if you click on this search on the left, and the idea being that you go down here and you type in the name that you're thinking of giving your LLC or corporation search and it'll pull up a list, and you'll go through that list and see if there's anything exactly the same or two similar. But that's the idea there. We also recommend you check the US patent and trademark office website. This is where people file trademarks. So if you really want legal protection. You would file a trademark with the US patent and trademark office and so you'll check, you'll go to this website again it's on the checklist, and you'll search trademarks. Same kind of idea, just type it in. And I usually just recommend this basic wordmark search that gives you a good indication you'll click search, it'll populate or not, if there's nothing similar. That's essentially what you want to do when you are searching your name, and that would be your first step is to file the articles of organization or articles of incorporation. And then the next step in that case would be to obtain a tax ID number for your LLC or corporation from the IRS so again like I mentioned earlier. We sold individuals, so providers would have a social security number. These entities corporations or LLCs will have a, what's called an EIN employer identification number and they obtain this from the IRS so this can be done online for free. You go to irs.gov. This is their website here. Best thing for you to do is just go to their main site irs.gov and type in EIN in their search field and click enter. You'll see apply for an employer identification number online you'll click there. It'll give you some information about determining your eligibility but essentially down here you'll find another button that says apply online now. You'll click there and it'll take you through an online application. And again, you'll see who's applying. Is it a sole proprietorship, is it a corporation or is LLC, a sole proprietor with no employees does not need an EIN, but we do get oftentimes sole proprietors that might do business to business where they're being asked to provide their tax number and rather than give out your social to many people because you want to try to protect your social, you could obtain an EIN as a sole proprietor that doesn't necessarily need one, but rather for business to business purposes, you might need to provide a tax number like if you're getting paid as a 1099 this happens a lot with like independent contractors. If you're an independent writer and you're, you know, working and writing for multiple publications and they're needing to pay you. They will likely want to pay you using the line and rather than give out your, in that case you could obtain this EIN it's free to obtain again and you get it within just a few minutes. So that would be your second step in this case in this example, if you are going forward with the corporation LLC. And then, once you have those two steps done then the next step is if your entity is operating in San Francisco, you will need to register with the city. This is done with our tax office, which is a city hall in room 140 as well so same office that we're in but we're separate from them. Again, this is required of anyone who does business in San Francisco and generally our rule is anyone engaged in business in San Francisco seven, any part of seven or more days in a fiscal year so the city we operate on a fiscal calendar so we're in our fourth quarter. Our new year will begin July 1. So if you will be operating seven days. The rest of this fiscal year you will need to be registered with us. And then with the tax office the, they also have an online business registration application it's done in three steps you're going to go on to their website and complete an application, and you're going to sign it to DocuSign form and then you're going to pay. The fees vary. The type of business, the start date and your estimated gross receipts so on the, let's see if I can go to their website. Yeah, so this is the office of the treasure tax collector website. You're going to click here where it says business, registry business. And the new business registration is here so again here there's information about our year again July 1 through June 30. The new business registry now will pay a fee for the current year, which is, you know, valid through June 30, and will likely also see a fee for the upcoming year. And so you could pay both fees now and be current until June 30 of 2023, or you could pay the current year fee and you can renew by May 31 of this year for the following year fee, but you will see both fees at this point if you're registering now. So, you'll click on the new business registration and these are the various parts of the application in my presentation I actually have screenshots of all of this but I think you know we don't have a lot of time to go through it all. We'll mail you that or email the presentation and you'll see the screenshots you can also just go through this without submitting. So feel free to do that but again one of your first questions here is Solver Pride or etc. So that's your San Francisco business registration. The one thing that I also wanted to point out here is how much is it cost to register. So again, the fee is based on estimated gross receipts there's going to be a question on the application that asks you to estimate your gross receipts. And when it asks this question it's going to ask you in the form of they want you to estimate your gross receipts for the current calendar year so if you are registering now, you would estimate what you expect to gross between now and the end of December. And if it's anywhere between zero and 100,000, it'll either be $52 or $43 plus a $4 state fee. And the difference between schedule and schedule B is based on business. So there's only three business types that fall under schedule B. And those are retail wholesale and something called certain services. Everything else falls under schedule A. So it would be $52 plus $4 for the current fiscal year. If you get into some of these higher gross receipts and gross between now and December, over 100,000. Then your fee would be the let's say the 86 amount at this point, because we are in the fourth quarter that $86 amount will be prorated, and you would pay 25% of the fee so all of the fees except the minimum amounts are prorated at this point because we are at the fourth quarter of our year and that talks about it right here there's information about that 25% of the fee except at the minimum amount. So you will renew that annually in May. That's your business registration. Also, if you do business under a different name, you, you would have to file what we call a fictitious business name. And this is done with the county clerk's office of San Francisco now what does that mean exactly so if I am going to register as a sole proprietor, and I'm going to open up my name. So my registration will be under my name Martha Yanis when I register, but I'm going to name my nail salon fancy nail or something like that. So I would register at the time of filling out my San Francisco business registration actually, I will want to confirm that the name is available. So if you actually let me go back to our checklist really quick. If you look here we have now three websites that we recommend that you search for the name, including the county clerk's office website. So, let me see. Yeah, so that's this office website office of the county clerk this is where you will officially file your fictitious business name after you register your business. I do want to ensure that you are searching for the name and making sure again that it's available. So before I had suggested that you check with the US patent and trademark office website, the secretary of state website. And now I'm also suggesting that you check the county clerk's database of registered businesses or fictitious names. So hopefully there'll be a place to research by name. If it's available that's a fancy nail is available, I would go ahead and register my business first. There's going to be down here. I would input my business name because I'm comfortable I've searched and it's available. So I'll register my business first and then I would be able to file my fictitious business name statement form with the office of the county clerk. So once you do the fictitious name statement filing, your name is valid for five years. But part of filing a fictitious name requires that you not only file a form with the county clerk's office, but also you have to publish the name in a newspaper. That is a requirement. So the fee to file with the county clerk's office is $58. That's for one person doing business under one name. So it's the same if you're like a corporation or an LLC. A lot of times LLCs when you, when you create an LLC, your name, the name of your LLC legally has to have LLC at the end of the name. Actually, let me stop real quick because I know we're already at two o'clock and I think this is only scheduled for two but can we go over a little bit. Okay, so I will try not to keep you guys too much longer like I said just feel free to follow up. Because I know this was only scheduled for an hour. But real quickly so you'll file the fictitious name form and then you'll publish the name. Once you do that again the name is valid for five years whereas again the business registration needs to be renewed every May. The name as long as there's no changes to the name and no changes to the address on the name or yeah the address on the name that you that will be valid for five years. One thing that I was saying with respect to LLC so LLCs have to have an LLC at the end of it. So it's like fancy nail LLC let's say that's what I'm going to name my LLC, but my shop name is just going to be fancy nail. Then I would still need to file a fictitious business name because at that point, fancy nail LLC is now doing business as fancy nail. And so the only way to avoid that is I would have to have like LLC on my signage at my shop after fancy nail. So, I know it's again a lot of information, but going forward. So after you do that this next box here talks about that sometimes there's additional permits and licenses that are required. This depends on the type of business that you do. Some businesses will have additional what we call regulatory permits and licenses that regulate your actual business activity. So what we do on the back side of the side of the checklist. Let me see if I could. So this is our checklist on the right hand side. We provide you a list of some local agencies, state and federal and give you like an idea of the permits that they administer. So for instance, if you are a restaurant or you're going to be opening up a restaurant in San Francisco, besides maybe all of the stuff on the left hand of this checklist or the front side of the checklist, you would additionally need permits from the San Francisco Health Department. They license and get a licensed food establishments essentially besides that, if you have outdoor tables and chairs. So in that example, I'm opening up a cafe. I'm going to have, you know, my business going to be registered. I'm going to get health permits from the health department. But if I want outdoor seating, I would also need permits from the Department of Public Works and in fact right now we have a another program called shared space that something that came about during the pandemic to try to help a lot of our businesses operate outdoors so the city provided a free permit for business that businesses could apply for to operate in the sidewalk or in the parking lane. And so I'm sure you've seen various little things built out on the parking lane. That's a program called shared space and businesses can still apply for that free, I believe, right now in November, the people who have had those permits will need to reapply by November. Some of them will be allowed to continue those locations and make them more accessible. And some of them might need to go away completely just depends on safety. And then in that example with my example of the cafe, you I would also need a seller's permit. And so this is now under the state column, and it's under the California Department of Tax and fee administration. So, anytime you are selling a tangible item, food included, if you're having no sit down service, you need a California sellers permit. And this is free. The idea being that you are going to be reporting to the state what your sales have been usually quarterly, and then you will pay what you've collected in sales tax. So that's why you don't necessarily pay to obtain this permit it's rather like pay as you go and you obtain it for free because you're going to become like a tax collector, essentially, for the state. So that just kind of gives you an idea if you're selling alcohol. In that example again cafe, I want to sell beer and wine I would also need ABC permits from the alcohol beverage control agency that's again another state agency. So that gives you an idea but again it's always best to to come in and talk to us. If you're not sure if you don't clearly see this is another thing in San Francisco we have very innovative people they're always you know coming up with new business ideas that sometimes we're having a research what might be necessary for what you're proposing to do. But everything is going to be addressed. Always, but that's another service that our office offers that you if you have a particular type of business that you don't see anybody has that business and you're not sure what's required, definitely reach out, and we can do some of that research and we'll end up doing usually reaching out to some of our city agencies and asking them what might be required or if they might fall under their jurisdiction or their code in some way, whatever you're proposing to do. So the other thing that I want to talk about and assessor tourists did already mentioned taxes so a little bit about our taxes in San Francisco, we have a general business tax that some businesses will pay a lot of our small businesses will be exempt from our general taxes. We have a small business exemption that essentially, if you grow less than two million. And then you might not have to pay the city's general tax. However, there is the business property tax which he had talked about. And actually, I just realized that the rate that I have here on my slides is a little higher so it's gone down for current year. And then we also have some special third party taxes these apply to certain businesses so like if you're a hotel operator or a parking lot operator, you will have this additional tax that you have to collect from your customer and you're going to be remitting that and reporting and remitting that to the city. Otherwise, a lot of our small businesses will be exempt from the city's general business tax and all, and may only have to pay their annual business registration. And if they have property values over 4,000, they may also have this business property tax that they do to the city. So I think I will stop there. And this is the rest of my presentation it goes through like these screenshots of how to organize your LLC. I went on their websites a little bit already to give you an idea but these are all the actual screenshots of the, the questions that you'll see here so again we'll email you all this, the employer identification number, the, let's see business registration so this talks a little bit more about who needs to be registered in San Francisco, and then it has a fee schedule again. Let's see what else do I have here then the screenshots of the actual business registration application. And what else do I have after this. That's a long one. Oh, I do want to mention there is a program right now. First, free. Again, this is the city's attempt at trying to get businesses to start up in San Francisco again. So if you are a business that's going to be opening up on a ground floor commercial storefront. And we're basically trying to get you know some of our vacancies filled our ground floor vacancies and so if you are a business that's going to be operating on the ground floor, and you are a small business, you may qualify for first year free. And what this does essentially it'll wave not only your business registration fees, but also your like in my example of a cafe it'll wave your health permit application, your health license fee for the first year. If you are needing to remodel the space, it will wave any of your building permit fees from the city, including signed permit fees so typically when you are going into a space. If you are planning on the space right you've confirmed that the youth permits or that the zoning, the location permits the use. Again by checking with the planning department you'll want to check and make sure that that that that is okay and actually I do have this. So this is a place where you can also check yourself whether a location is allowed, whether a particular type of business would be allowed at the given location that you're considering. There's also this other tool called Sumbium build for business. Actually, let me go to their website. Yeah, so this is better. So this is the address of planning.org. Find my zoning. If you have a location in mind, you could plug in the address here. You kind of have to be though, able to kind of read the zoning control tables. So you would plug in an address and it would pull up the zoning and it will have these zoning control tables that essentially kind of tell you what's permitted or not permitted. So like here for instance, this is a zoning district called NC1. The address is 218 Fillmore, and this might be a little outdated but essentially a gem. If you were trying to open up a gem at this location, you see this P here that means it's permitted. This is controlled by story. So this is first story, second story, third story. So of course a gem would not be permitted and P means not permitted on the second or third story, but on the first story, yes. Hotel not permitted in this zoning district and so forth. So you'll see that. That's why I say you kind of have to be able to do that. Otherwise, if you want something a little bit more easy, if you scroll down on this page, there's going to be the section, this section says to me and build for business. This is a good tool to use as like a starting point, but I would always recommend that you confirm by checking with the planning department or checking with us that what you're seeing here is going to be accurate. You can search by location if you had a location in mind, or you can search by business if you kind of just want to generally know where you might be able to open up a bar. Let me do this. You can, you know, look at search by business type in bar, or if you have a location in mind, you can click the address here. Let me do it. It's a little slow. I think my internet is slow, but to save time, just know that that's there. There's also a new website where you can apply for permits. To the extent like let's say you find a location, you confirm the zoning, but if that had not already been a bar, maybe that space was, maybe that space was a retail store and you're converting it into a bar. That would be considered a change of use. And typically changes of use is require a building permit to be pulled from the building department and in this case, it would also require architectural plans because now you're putting a food facility in a space that hasn't been a food facility. So I always tell people in order to save time and money. If you are looking to open up something, look to open in a space that was maybe already operated in the same way or same type of business otherwise you will likely go through the process of having to do a change of use and requiring building permits requiring architectural plans. And so that will just, you know, further delay or how quickly you can open up there. But with this first year program though, a lot of those fees will be waived which is great right now. And that's for anybody that's registering between now and October of this year. Or actually, yeah, it started for anybody who registered between November 1 of last year and October 31 of this year and as long as your gross, your estimated gross receipts will be under treatment. And it's not a formula retail business, meaning it's not a chain. Then you will likely be eligible for this and have a lot of your fees, your first year fees waived. So there's information about that. So what else do I have here? Oh, I do have information about ADA. So yeah, you definitely want to consider accessibility in a space that you might be looking to rent, that's going to be accessible to the public generally your entrance should be accessible so if you clearly see there's a step or the entrance is a little too narrow or something and you'll want to do what we're recommending is that you would hire somebody called a certified access specialist. It's generally an architect with a special certification and accessibility, and they would do come in and do an inspection and kind of outline for you what you might need to do to remove barriers to access maybe sometimes that's just installing an automatic door opener or somehow removing that step. Right now, we are we do have a grant to help pay for that instruction. If you are a business. There's also another program called the accessible business entrance program, where property owners are being required by the city to to comply by submitting a checklist which basically tells the city. They're about their property and what tier they fall under whether they need to make modifications. What we're finding is a lot of property owners are putting this burden on the small business tenant. And if that is you. The city has this 88 inspection that can help pay for that inspection up to $1000 by cast inspection to comply with the accessible business entrance program or up to 3000 for a full cast so unfortunately a lot of our businesses are being sued for lack of compliance with the ADA the Americans with Disabilities Act which is really a sweeping civil rights law that says that you cannot discriminate against people with disabilities period. And so we have been trying to educate the business community about ways that they can reduce the risk of being sued and one of the ways is to this inspection done by this cast inspector. There's also another grant that we have open right now to help with design services so if you are needing to make modifications and you're going to need to have plans to submit to the building department. You can apply for up to $5000 of architectural services the city will find you the architectural work with and have them do your plans. And then later there's also going to be a construction grant to help you actually do the work that needs to be done. And then this last slide finally our business resources so again a lot of technical service providers that can help you with entrepreneurship training business planning coaching. So you'll find a list of those here we also have some financial resources. Main Street launches administering a loan for the city. So you can check those out there. And there's a few other these are community lenders, or what we call nonprofit lenders so ideally if you are starting to do can go to your lender bank that you might already be active and try to get a small business loan from them but what we're finding oftentimes if you're a new business that's not going to be available for you and so these community lenders are another option. But because they are an alternative option, their interest rate is usually a little bit higher. But we have had some programs at zero interest. So take a look at that and then our legal resources. With that, I will go ahead and stop sharing and I was gone over and hopefully take some questions. I'm happy to stay on I can stay on. But I also don't want to keep people to too long. So, yeah, I'll stop there. Yeah, that was so good. You're such a wealth of information. There's so much information and I know I talked fast and I apologize but like I said we do try to make ourselves accessible so feel free to follow up directly. If you do want more one on one or have additional questions. Right. I think there are just a couple of questions. I'm really on someone said that they had trouble reaching someone to answer a question real time and I think the form that she submitted was on the treasure and tax collector website. Is there a way of reaching someone in real time and just asking a question. So if it is a question related to the office of the treasure tax collector that's going to be more difficult. So 311. So 311 the city's kind of call customer service call center is does answer calls in real time. Depending on what your question is they might be able to answer it right then and there or they might need to send a message to someone in the tax office to get back to you. We are limited in staff those still often times like right now I'm actually on my is supposed to be on answering call duty, but as you know I'm here in this presentation so during this time I haven't been able to answer the calls and so that means nobody else is answering the calls either But if you leave a message would you check that I'll be doing that right after this checking messages and trying to get back to people we try to be really responsive and get back to people either same day or next day. Through our office and that we may be able to help you if it's a tax related question or we might need to have you reach out to them directly, but I think also if it is a tax related question, they do have on their on their website they have help get help or a help center. And my understanding is that if you submit through that link before seven they're supposed to get back to you same day as well. Thank you. Someone had a question. Can you renew online and when you renew to have to renew both the DBA and business license. Yes, you can renew the business registration online. And that's the one that is due every May by the last day of May. I believe the tax office is sending out notices this week about the renewal on so some businesses will receive one notice and others will receive other notices so for instance my understanding is that if you're a small business that reported gross receipts less than 50,000 last year and you have zero employees, you will receive a bill that you just need to pay. However, if you are not that your larger business, you will receive a notice instructing you how to go online and complete an actual renewal where you have to answer questions about what your gross receipts were, and then it will be billed or your fee will be based on that information that you're reporting. And there's also some businesses that are exempt organizations like nonprofits and provided that they are still exempt, they might not need to do anything so they'll receive a different type of notice but yes the tax office, I believe just this week is starting to send out those notices, and yeah you will either go online and complete a renewal or you'll just need to pay a bill online. You know it does not renew your fictitious name those are two different things with two different city departments so fictitious names are done through the county clerk's office. And those are valid for five years so depending on kind of where you're at what year you're at, you might still have time remaining on that or you might need to renew soon. You would want to check with the county clerk's office actually on their website I believe if you have a fictitious name you can search, and you'll likely find yours and you'll be able to see the date that you filed, and then you'll know kind of roughly when it's due. And for that one you will not be able to renew online the fictitious name, you will need to file a brand new fictitious name statement form. And that one is done in person at city hall or by mail to the county clerk's office. Okay, thank you. So another question is, can we change from LLC to sole proprietorship at any time. My sense is that yes you can always switch your structure I think a tax professional might be might recommend that you stay in one structure for that tax year. So maybe not change mid year, but that is something that you'll want to discuss with the tax professional but generally my understanding is that you probably can change at any time. Thank you. And someone else asked the seller's permit application asks for an S E IN. Is that the same as the E IN. They asked separately for the federal E IN. Yeah, I believe it's different it's one issue by the state and I'm actually less familiar with that to be honest with you. But yes I believe it's a state employer number. Okay. Well I don't see any other questions. Well, and we are almost at time, while we are actually for overtime. I apologize. So good Martha thank you so much for covering all that information. Yeah, I know it's been my pleasure and I'm excited to work with you guys as you think about starting a business here. Definitely feel free to reach out. We'll send you guys all this information and my contact is there. Feel free to reach out emails always the best in terms of reaching out because like I said usually there's one of us in the office so we overly over there's two of us right now at the office, and we overlap only one day a week so the other days. We might be assisting clients at the counter and so again not able to pick up the phone or not able to help you if you were to walk in so usually if you're trying to come in as best to schedule an appointment. Otherwise, email is really good for food to email and we'll reach back out as soon as we become available. What is the email address. So the main, our office main email address is SF OSB stands for San Francisco office small business at SF gov.org. Okay, so my email is, is on the presentation slides to perfect. So I will be sending Martha slides to everyone along with the thing to the recording. So you can review it. And again, I want to thank Martha so much that was fantastic. And I hope you reach out to the Office of Small Business and also to the library to for all your research needs. Yes, a lot of thank yous coming in chat Martha. Awesome. Yay. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you for that email from me and again I just want to thank Martha and happy small business week everyone. Yeah, happy small business week everyone. Thanks. Okay, of course. Okay.