 I will be presenting today on starting a small business in San Francisco, specifically. So I'm Marta Yanis with the Office of Small Business. We are a city and county of San Francisco government agency, and we are located inside City Hall. We're really set up to help people who want to start a business in San Francisco, specifically. Seeing that we are a city and county of San Francisco government agency, we are really able to assist you with the local San Francisco specific requirements. We like to consider ourselves the first place for you to come to get information on starting a small business in the city. Or we also assist people who already have businesses and operating in San Francisco with whatever their needs are, whether they are looking to expand and grow, hire employees, need loans, finance being, speaking business programs, we like to consider ourselves the first place that all people should come to or contact with all things small businesses in San Francisco. I didn't prepare a presentation, which I will share in a moment, but this is going to give you a little bit more background, which isn't included in this slide. Our office was created back in 2008, I believe, and it was created out of the need for the city to provide assistance and resources to small businesses. At the time, the city was passing local laws that were going to ultimately impact small businesses that operate in San Francisco, many having to do with employees and having employees. So if you are a small business that will have employees in San Francisco, you need to be aware that there are employer mandates that are actually were unique originally when they were implemented back in 2008 to San Francisco. Since then, the state and the federal government have adopted similar laws, but at the time, the city was really putting a lot on the backs of small businesses, and so there was an idea to create an office and assistance center to serve small businesses. So we define small businesses as less than 100 employees, so really that makes over, I would say, 90% of our business community impact, so it's all by our desk by that definition. And so, again, at the time back in 2008, the city was getting ready to pass the PASIC League Ordinance, so before the state created a PASIC League Ordinance, the city was proposing one, and that requires that if you have even one employee that you require to surprise, take time off from that employee in case they're sick or stay home with a sick child, et cetera, at the time, there was also another proposal, well before Obamacare, the city was already at the time also discussing a mandate or a law to require employees to provide health coverage to their employees, and that was going to apply once you have 20 or more employees, and then the minimum wage and support has always been higher than the nation's minimum wage. So again, if you are someone who's opening up a business in San Francisco, particularly if you want to have employees, there was a lease at that time that we needed a place for small businesses to come and get assistance, find out about programs, et cetera. So that's kind of how our office was created back in 2008. We are located inside City Hall, so I think now I will go ahead and start sharing my screen. I will say that this presentation is packed with lots of information. If you take anything away from this presentation, a PowerPoint, definitely take down our contact information, because we want you to contact us. Again, this is a lot of information that I'm going to cover today, so feel free to, if it's too much or it's going to be too fast, definitely just follow up with us by calling our main line, or my contact info is on the presentation site as well, my direct number, my email, so if you'd like to make ourselves really accessible and available to you, so do not hesitate to reach out after this or at any point going forward. So with that, I will start sharing my screen. And then again, we'll take questions at the end. So hopefully you guys can all see my slide that's here. Yes. Starting to do San Francisco Small Business Week, 2023, presented by the San Francisco Office of Small Business and myself, Marcia Yanis. So this is just a little bit of information about us and who we are. Again, we are a San Francisco City Government Agency. We're under the Office of Economic and Workforce Development of the City, and we're also overseen by the San Francisco Small Business Commission. The San Francisco Small Business Commission, just a little bit about them. They are a seven member body. They are appointed by these folks that serve on the commission. They are either small business owners themselves or somehow work with small businesses in the city. They are appointed by the mayor and the board of supervisors, and they need regularly at City Hall to review policy and law that might ultimately impact small businesses that operate here. So like back in 2008, when the city was getting prepared to pass the paid six-leaf ordinance and the health care security ordinance and raising the minimum wage, all of those are decisions that are being made at City Hall. And ultimately, if you're going to be a business that operates in San Francisco, we want to make sure that you are engaged in those conversations or know that you can be engaged in those conversations. So you can tune in to our commission meetings. You can find that information about what the commission needs on our website. And I'll share our website with you later. You can see the agenda and kind of see what's being discussed and determine whether it's something that you want to participate in that conversation. You can participate in those conversations by either again attending the meetings, calling in, emailing, sending letters. However, we want to connect with the commission. Their information is on our website, and I do encourage you to at least review and look at our agenda to see what's being done so you can be engaged. We are located in San City Hall, San Francisco. We're on the first floor within the tax office website, but we're totally separate from that. So the idea is that people usually know that they need to come in and register or do something at City Hall. So let's put us here at City Hall where we can also serve the people that might otherwise be coming into City Hall to register, pay their tax, et cetera. We also have now dedicated permit specialist staff over at the permit center. And these permit specialists over at 49 stops, they will help with any kind of permitting needs. So if you are opening up a business that's going to require any particular type of permitting, whether it's building construction permitting for doing alterations, remodeling for establishing the use of health permits. If you're a cafe or restaurant, our dedicated permit specialist over at the permit center will are there to work with you to help you through that process because it can be a tricky and sometimes convoluted process. So now we have dedicated permit specialist there and there's going to be a slide to show you how you can connect with both of our teams here at City Hall and over at the permit center. We, again, like to consider ourselves the city's central point for all things small business, we can buy customized one to one business assistant and I'll go over that a little bit more. But basically, we really kind of sit down with you when you come in or when we talk, we'll get after what stage you're at with what you're doing, what is it that you're trying to do, what type of business are you trying to open and then we will work from there to either guide you to additional resources or assistance or to kind of lay out for you the steps in the order that you need to take to get registered, to get the proper permit, et cetera, which is really customized to what you're doing and kind of like at what stage you're at with what you're doing. We provide services in English, Spanish, and Cantonese, Mandarin, directly by staff at the office and other languages. We use language lines and language lines. So, yeah, we try to make ourselves really accessible and available. Here's a slide that covers some of the services that we offer. So, yeah, we provide information on starting a business in San Francisco that includes business formation and registration information and assistance. We also assist with the suspicious business name filing and operational permits and licenses. We assist with zoning and brand use information and we provide information about some important considerations that you need to be thinking about, particularly for those of you who might be looking to open a brick and mortar business, an actual storefront. Here in the city, we provide information on small business accessibility. We also provide you and connect you with business programs. So I'd like to say that we detail out information about various business programs that are available from the city or otherwise. So that includes grants, loans, and right now we have a program called First Year Free, which I'll also cover in this presentation. We also connect you with business training and technical assistance providers and legal resources. So there are some things that we do not do in-house and those things are we do not provide assistance with business plan development. We don't provide any kind of workshops or trainings ourselves, but rather we rely on our partner organization, which there are several of them, and we'll have a slide that will show you all of our partner organizations at the end of the program. This is planning. We do not assist with, we're also not lawyers nor tax professionals, so we do not advise you with providing legal advice. So if you're needing someone to help review a lease, we would refer you out for that to our legal resources. So those are the main things that we don't do, but otherwise, again, we like to be the first person that you contact, and I think I do. We also provide some general information on how to become a city vendor and getting certified as a local business enterprise. I'll be a certification and then you'll be able to provide information on some of those labor laws, including workplace posters. This is a slide on how and where you can contact us. This slide is also at the very end of my presentation. There's a lot of information here. The main thing is you can go to our website, which is right there on the left-hand side, ss.gov, and you can see our different divisions as City Hall and our permit center team. And if you can submit a question or schedule an in-person appointment right from our website, there's a link to schedule an appointment with us. If you want to log in there or you click on that link, then you'll be directed to do you want to schedule an appointment with the staff at City Hall for kind of general small business assistance, registration, or do you need a specific special permit assistance? And then, therefore, you can schedule an appointment with our permit center team, permit specialist. So that's that. And this slide is really just a sign to give you a quick overview of the steps that you need to be considering and the order in which you would do these while you're thinking of starting a business here in San Francisco. So one of the first things that we really try to push people to do is to take some business classes, go up and try to work on developing a business plan around your business idea. It's something that we have found that when people take the time to really go and work on developing a business plan and taking classes, that they are ultimately going to be more successful in their business if they take the time to do that and rather than just kind of like have somebody do it for you, you should actually do the work and understand what goes into the business plan and to research specifically for the type of business that you're looking to start marketing for that type of business, finance for that type of business. Those things are all part of the business plan. So again, we would connect you with our partner organizations that are set up to help you with that because we don't do that. We also, the second thing or one of the other things that you'll have to do upfront is to select a business structure. And we'll talk about that a little bit more. Also think about procuring financing and filing your article organization if you're going to think about incorporating either an LLC or a corporation. You would then need to obtain your employer identification number and then register with San Francisco and then file a petition saying, so this is kind of laid out in the order that you would do things depending on how you ultimately structure a business which will cover a little bit more again. And then you're looking at obtaining operational permits and licenses if applicable. Not all, not all types of businesses will have additional operational permits and licenses. And we'll talk about that again. And then making sure that you take compliance, filing your taxes and renewing your registration center. We'll also talk about that a little bit more. So our next slide. As I mentioned, one of the first things to be thinking about when you think about starting a business, and particularly right before you think about registering, is you need to determine a business structure. So you might have heard of LLCs, limited liability companies, corporations, social providers, general partnerships. Here on the right you will see a comparison table of the different types of, these are like the most common types of business structures that we encounter and characteristics for each of them. There's also resources here on the left-hand side on how you can choose the best business structure for your particular type of business. It is something that would do encourage that you consult with either a business lawyer, or a tax professional like a CPA, because ultimately this decision can make a difference in terms of how you file your taxes and where you need to begin to register. So generally the more risk involved in the business that you're getting into and the more that you have to lose. So if, for example, if you have access like a home, for example, and the business that you're getting into is very risky, then you may not want to consider a social proprietorship. You might want to consider the two on the right, which is the small corporation or the limited liability company. Both of those provide a separation between you and your business so that you're not personally liable. That's the main difference between the social proprietorship general partnership and the corporations and LLCs. However, that's not even necessary. I always like to tell people not all businesses are created the same and what might work for one business doesn't mean that that's necessary for your business. We get a lot of people that come into our office, particularly right now, because there is a fee waiver for creating a corporation and an LLC at the moment, or we get a lot of people who say, oh, my friend has an LLC. I want to form an LLC or somebody who called me to create an LLC. But when we start talking to them a little bit, we determine or we find out that really what they're doing is there's not a lot of risk involved and they really have nothing to lose. And maybe those types of entities are not necessary at the stage because they're just getting started. What I will say is, again, we don't provide legal or taxified. So this is pretty much the extent of the conversation that we would have with you if you were to come in and weren't sure, we would suggest that you go and get some of that consultation. And again, the legal services for entrepreneurs are these lawyers. These free legal weeks, they're free, is what I want to say. So, legal services for entrepreneurs provides free legal assistance if you qualify based on income. So what I would encourage you to do is to visit their website we can share these slides at the end later and so these slides you should be able to click and it'll take you to their website. Otherwise, if you just Google legal services for entrepreneurs or on the internet to the search, you should come to their website. They're also going to be listed on that last slide or the second to the last slide with their contact information. The SFR has a lawyer referral service for $35. They provide 30 minutes with the lawyer and sometimes that's the last time to kind of make this determination. You can also get some additional information at sba.gov and the San Francisco Public Library for for legal services office. They have this kind of information to do a lot of research there. But ultimately, yes, this is something that you want to research depends again on your type of business and your specific financial situation. A scope of partnership is definitely easier to get started and to get registered and only requires that you register at the local level. Whereas an LLC, Limited Liability Company or a corporation or corporation, all of those unique of these entities, the LLC and the corporation, almost like a separate legal entity, separate from yourself, kind of almost like a person. You might have actually have heard of corporations referred to as people. I do like to kind of put it that way because it's easier to kind of grasp. But basically, it's going to be a separate person, separate from you. And because of that, it has to be foreign. So you do that by filing with the California Secretary of State. You create this separate entity and have its own legal name. And similar to how we in the results have our own legal name and then we can have a social security number. These entities will also request a tax number to identify that for tax purposes. So there is an order. I think now I will go ahead and go to the next slide, which is our checklist. So if you were to come in to our office, we would sit down with you and we will pull out the checklist and we will kind of go over it with you based on our discussion with you. If you come in and you've told us, you know, you've already spoken with a lawyer, or you've already done your research and you have determined that you want to form an LLC or a corporation that we would identify that the first step on this checklist for you is to create your entity and you have a central already. And I say that because there are services and we see a lot of people come in who have already paid a company online to create their LLC or their corporation. So if you've done that then we'll kind of be able to stuff that with you. You might already have some of these things and then we'll pursue some of that stuff. But if you have not, then your first step would be to form that entity. Again, think of it as another person. So you're going to create that person by filing what we call articles of organization that's for the LLC or articles of incorporation. That's for the corporation. You do that online through the California Secretary of State website. And I'll have more slides on that later. But essentially that's where you begin on this checklist. Once you've done that, and like I mentioned before, these entities because they're like a person will need to have their own tax number. So then the next step and the next box on the checklist on the left which actually ends up being like the third box, the tax ID EIN number. So the next step would be to obtain that EIN number, that tax number for your corporation or LLC. And that is something that is due by going online to the IRS website and requesting that EIN number. This is generally free and generally obtained by way online. Once you have that, then anyone who operates in San Francisco, whether they are an individual for the predator, a general partnership to people or more, or these corporations or LLCs when they operate in San Francisco generally seven or more days you are required to be registered with San Francisco as a business. So that would be the next step if you have a business registration and we'll have a slide on that process as well. And then if you do business under a different name other than the owner's name. So if you're operating as a social private or your business registration is going to be under your name your legal name or if you're operating as a corporation or an LLC the registration will be filed under that corporation or LLC name. But you can also choose to do business under a different name. So if I'm operating as a social proprietor and I'm going to have a flower shop and I want the shop name to be Sunshine Flowers or something like that that's a name that's different than my legal name. In that case it's considered to be fictitious not my legal name. David's true if I've created an LLC and I've called my LLC maybe like Yanis LLC or flowers are an LLC but then my shop name called Sunshine Flowers again it's a different name than the entity name I filed a date therefore it's considered fictitious and I would need to file a fictitious business name statement. This is also known as a DVA doing business as. And so that's another step and that happens with the county clerk's office. And then beneath the fictitious name box here on the left you will see where it says additional permits and licenses. Some businesses will have additional permits and licenses that they will need to obtain. These are operational permits usually that regulate the type of business activity that is being conducted. Again not all businesses have additional operational permits but one clear example that I like to use a lot is a cafe or any type of food business. If they're selling food then there is some sort of a health permit that you would need either from our local health department or the state health department. So in addition to possibly all these things on the left hand side you know maybe you formed your entity or LLC you've obtained your EIN number you have registered your LLC to do business in San Francisco with by filing your San Francisco business registration and you file a fictitious business saying if you are a cafe or selling food you might also need a health permit from the health department. So here on the right hand side of this checklist we have some of our local departments and this might be a little bit hard to see but again we can't share this later. We've identified here some of our more common city departments and agencies and some state and federal departments and agencies that you might also need to engage with depending on your business activities. So let's see if I can actually assume. But so again in that example of the cafe we have here the San Francisco health department at if you could see it you would need to additionally obtain a permit from them and then because you are selling goods under the state column you would also need a California seller's permit it's called seller's permit and that's through the California Department of Staff and State Administration. So again what we do part of what we do is we would sit down with you when you come in we would pull out this checklist we would have a conversation with you about what it is that you're trying to do and we would go through the checklist and mark it up for you based on that discussion conversation. So that is going to give you a sense of what we do. So going forward the next slides will really get into the steps and the process to organizing a corporation or an LLC if you're going that route but again ultimately something a lot of stuff to order or a tax professional so we also what they have well so we don't have a referral for a tax professional unfortunately so that might be something that you might need to find on their own ideally you would want to ask for like the CPA as opposed to we have a lot of folks who sometimes will use a notary public to file their taxes we encourage you to really talk to a tax professional CPA when you are fighting on your business structure and so this is a slide that kind of provides you a brief overview creating or organizing an LLC or a corporation on the left you'll have that limited liability company LLCs also something that we cannot assist you with so but something that you should know LLCs or should have something called an LLC operating agreement this is kind of like a document that that says how the LLC will be managed and governed it doesn't need to be turned in anywhere rather something that you would have on hand for yourself particularly if there's going to be two or more of you that are going to be owners or owners of an LLC are considered members so you should definitely have a written operating agreement this kind of detail is like how the LLC managed it's one member wants out what does that process look like or if you want to bring in other members kind of what does that look like we while we can't help you but initially kind of just create the LLC or corporations through our office we need you to not assist with operating agreement or corporation has something similar called corporate bylaws these are actual documents that again say how your corporation is going to be managed and governed and that is something that you'll usually want to have a rare assist you with so again referring back to our legal resources that is something that potentially they can help you with for those of you who might be interested in hiring or going with one of those online services that that you pay for to create these entities they will often part of what you're paying for is those documents as well so usually they will set up your LLC and then they also might create your LLC operating agreement or corporate bylaws but usually those services don't use the local filing so you really want to know if you're going to go that route what it is that you're paying for and this is something that you can do yourself so you don't necessarily need to hire these folks but if you don't then you will need to consult with a lawyer through either one of our free legal resources or low cost legal resources that assist you with the operating agreement corporate bylaws and by the way for both of these you can also do an internet search to just even get like a draft or understand what is an LLC operating agreement what is in an LLC operating agreement and you can get a lot more details to start putting something together you might even find templates if that will be helpful for you if you can put something together even a draft for when you do go and speak to a lawyer you have something to show you that they can kind of look over for you same goes for the corporate bylaws there's a lot of information you can receive online by the way, searches go definitely to the banister library they have sure a lot of information on all of this as well but ultimately to create or file the articles of organization or the articles of the corporation you would do that at the california secretary state website and the website listed there within 90 days of filing your original article you also will be able to log back and basically to the secretary state website and file something else called a statement of information and again right now the fee for the filing of the original articles of organization or articles of the corporation that's being waived for LLCs and corporates that organized between January 1st, 2021 and before January 1st, 2024 but the statement of information that has to be filed within 90 days that is something that you will need to pay for so that's $20 for the LLC 25 corporations so usually what will happen is you go on the secretary state website you'll create a log in or a log on and you will file your articles and then you should receive an email from the secretary to stay after about eight days processing time to vary depending on how busy they are but maybe it's been about eight days then it takes the state to file your articles you will then be notified or you can also go on the website and search and see it your articles have been filed but once you see that your article has been filed or you receive an email from the state that your article has been filed then you can log back in and file your statement of information the statement of information is something that is here for LLC and every year for corporations so again there is more maintenance more management with having one of these types of entities that you want to consider if you're just getting started whether you're up for staying on top of these filings the other such filing is that these entities have to pay an annual tax to the franchise tax force of $800 regardless of whether you make any money or if you're actually operating it's the simple fact that you have created this entity that will require you to pay this minimum of $800 tax to the franchise tax force so you will start to receive a lot of documentation from the franchise tax force of the Secretary of State that you'll kind of need to know how to manage because we will not be able to assist you with that once forward so I really like to encourage you to do your due diligence and determine if this is really the route that you take right now or maybe it's something that you can look forward to in the future as your business grows you'll have to kind of determine that for yourself again based on what type of business you're starting and how much work is involved what you have to lose et cetera et cetera so that's why I'm just kind of provided a screenshot of kind of where you will go if you're going to file this yourself and information that you'll need to file and to kind of show you what you will see when you go to the Secretary of State website you'll see this file online you'll click there if you don't have an account already you have created an account you'll see this there's a other photo on the bottom left it has a little red arrow pointing to a login and once you click on that login you'll either be able to login if you already have stated to login or you'll be able to sign up and to sign up you'll provide your email and the password I believe but essentially once you're in here you'll see the the form file either the articles there the Articles of Organization if it's an LLC or the Corporation you'll see this here on the form and that will open up basically the form and here on the left-hand side this is an example of the LLC you'll see on the left-hand side all the sections that need to be filled in but I kind of before we go through this I want to go back up to this slide and talk a little bit about what information will be needed to complete this form so the LLC name the LLC you need to know that the LLC name includes an LLC ending that could be simply LLC it could be L period L period C period it could be spelled out limited liability company that is up to you but it does have to have one of those endings and that full name is the legal name so again in my example if I want to open up a flower store and I'm going to create an LLC because let's say I have a home and well it's probably not a lot of bricks and flowers but let's just go with it I want to create an LLC I'm going to name my LLC Sunshine Flowers LLC that's the legal name but then if I name my shop Sunshine Flowers without the LLC ending and you think about our storefront so that means that I am doing this under a sufficient name if I do that but again my legal name is Sunshine Flowers LLC in that example so you need to make sure that there's an LLC ending you also need your LLC address you will need something called agent for service of process this is generally or specifically a resident to be yourself but this person is listed here as a person who can receive legal documentation in case the LLC is sued so an agent for service of process some people who use some of those services to create the LLC or the corporation those service providers may also include as part of their fee and when you pay that a year's worth of providing that service for you when they list themselves or they list somebody else and the agent for service of process you can also be your own agent for service of process you also will need to know the management structure of your LLC there's question on the form that asks how will this LLC be managed and your options are one manager more than one manager you will need to know LLC members again this is not something that we can advise you on so this is something that you'll want to research upfront again I can talk to the lawyers or do me your research at the library or online what's the best management structure different information on how to choose that so what I can't say is to be a member of members remember owners of the LLC that's what owners are referred to as members so but managers don't necessarily need to be members so that's something that you'll need to know when you're filling out the form and then for corporations very similar you'll need your corporation name corporations often have an E at the end of it IMC but they're not required to so whereas the LLC definitely have to have an LLC and the corporation choose to have an E or don't have to have that's kind of a preference up to you also one thing I forgot to mention is before you go about forming your LLC will you recommend that you first search for the name and make sure that you're not filling out this form or a name that already exists so on the same website the Secretary of State website where you saw like here you'll look on the left hand side you'll see there's a search button if you click on that search button you'll be brought to a page where you can input the name that you are considering for your LLC or corporation and then click enter and you'll get either a list of things that are very similar or you will get no results so you definitely do not want to register the same name and I usually just stay away from anything that's too similar especially if it's like the same type of business but you may or may not know here but you might need to Google it that this is kind of the type of line of work they're in but yeah you want to stay away from anything that's exactly the same or too similar especially the same type of business activity and especially if it's in the same area but generally but definitely the type of thing if you file something that's the same or really really similar they may reject your your file so definitely search before you start going about the filing but kind of back to the information needed for a corporation for the corporate name, the corporate address, the agent for the service process all of that same and then the last thing is also something you won't be able to assist you with but you'll need to know the total number of shares the corporation is authorized to issue so this is something again you'll want to consult with a business lawyer or a past professional see if they can help you make that determination I'm not actually sure how you make that determination but you can also try to research it online but that is something that you will need to know at the moment of filing out these forms so let's scroll over this is basically the form there's this privacy warning it literally says that that information is private so there's that public database anybody can go to the Secretary of State website and search for a name and find out who has registered it so you'll want to keep that in mind then there's submitter information on the left hand side bottom left that's just who submitting this form usually yourself there's this notice about professional services so there's some types of differences I think like garden tax employers who cannot organize as an LLC again remember this example this slide is for LLC then the LLC name sorry if you're on the bottom right and it does not say here unfortunately that it needs to have the LLC entity oh no it says I think so see the proposed name will appear on a record of California Secretary of State exactly as entered including the LLC identifier so I think if you fail to put the LLC identifier it'll be read and it won't let you go forward so it needs to have that LLC entity as I mentioned before the next slides are initial street address of principal office of LLC initial mailing address of LLC and an agent for service of process here on the top right is where you need to select your management structure and then that's pretty much it so you'll submit you'll pay or there's no fee right now and then like I said you're supposed to receive an email from the Secretary of State when your articles have been filed we've been getting people who have files and have not received an email so they call us back and so what you can do if it's been a week and you haven't received anything you can also log in to the Secretary of State website and see for yourself by searching under the name of your LLC and it comes up if it's been filed you can then go ahead and log in and submit that statement of information which is that next so then the next slide helps you with obtaining an employer identification number which again if you think back to our checklist the order that you do this been if you're going to go the route of an LLC corporation then the next step after your entity has been organized or created essentially is to solicit this by end of September so there's an employer identification number also referred to as a federal employer identification number FBIN this is obtained from the IRS website directly you can get this for free we've seen people at the time pay for this sometimes what may happen if you go on the IRS website you may end up putting it on something where you get redirected somewhere else so if at the end you're being charged for this just so that you probably have ended up on some other site and you can just go right back onto IRS.gov website and try it again so the best thing to do here is when you're on IRS.gov website is in the search field type in EIN hopefully you can see that then search then you'll get this second picture here that will say employer ID numbers and there's one option that says employer identifier identification number online once you click there you'll see this other picture or screen and you'll want to click where it says of client online now and then for this the screenshot you're going to see are the sections of this that are essentially are here so one of the first things that you're going to be asked is what type of legal structure it is so you will select accordingly one thing that I will say is social providers that do not have employees do not need an EIN you can operate this with your social however sometimes if you are doing work with a freelance writer or the freelance dependent contractor where someone is needing to pay you and they're asking to fill out a EIN number where you're having to provide your tax number on there for social providers rather than putting your social especially if you're doing work for multiple people where you might need to fill out multiple of these forms and rather than have your social security number out there you can't opt to get an EIN number from the IRS even though technically it's not necessary but that is the way that you can try to provide your social and so then you would select the appropriate type of structure and this example of that is stuck to the LLC so then why is the LLC asking any EIN starting a new business etc that seems to be the one that we check and let's see the next step there's a next screen tell us more about the members of the LLC so LLCs can be a one member just yourself called a single member LLC or it can be a multi member LLC two or more members when a single member LLC for tax purposes it gets defaulted and treated like a social provider so there's going to be a question here that asks how you want to be treated for tax purposes basically you'll select the number of members you'll select the state that you organized in oh one thing I want to mention with that is oftentimes we have LLCs or corporations that were incorporated out of state in another state like Delaware or Nevada are a couple of popular states or corporations to organize in that you really have to do with a sort of a tax benefit I can't speak to that but what I will say is that's the case where you organized out of state you would still need to qualify you were out of state entity to do business in California by going through the process of filing with the secretary of state the EIN number is something that you probably already would have because that's a federal number and so you wouldn't need to get a new EIN in that case but you would need to file paperwork with the California secretary of state to be subject to our minimum $800 tax annually so that's something that you'll want to discuss down with a tax professional or a lawyer to help you determine whether it makes sense to file out of state or not what I understand and again I'm not a lawyer or a tax professional is that generally our larger corporations those that do business throughout the U.S. are the ones that they file in another state and still are against Nevada so these are like your Twitters of the World, Facebook, Chevron larger corporations but that's not a state that is not a best choice for you but definitely something that you'll want to consider or talk to again a tax professional or a lawyer so going forward who is a responsible party of the LLC you will select some of these individuals so the next question you selected individual to tell us about the responsible party and so again if it's just myself or even if it's me and another member I will quote one person has to be a responsible party so you put one of your information there with your social and then it will ask where the LLC is specifically located and then it will ask you to tell them more about your LLC where you would insert the name of your LLC as files with the Secretary of State again including that LLC in these and then it also is going to ask you if you have a trade name or if you're doing business under a different name you'll want to enter that there and also before you do that we recommend that you search for the name availability of any name that you're using whether it's your LLC name or your CBA, CBC name also basically the same thing CBC name, CBA, trade name that all means the same thing and they encourage you to search in a number of sources before you decide to move forward with any particular name and that's going to be on another screen I think on the website where you search but then I'm going to state territory where articles have the files and your LLC it's not the eight files over here additional information is what does your business or organization do so there's a list of business types here on the left if you don't clearly see your type in one of those there is this option of other at the very bottom and if you choose other I think there's another screen that I may have included here where you get to indicate what it is and so I think there's services another option under other and you can actually even type in what type of service so I think there's a couple screens but then here tell us more about the LLC there's a few questions please don't apply to a lot of businesses but it all depends what you're doing so you can always click on those links to read a little bit more about what those mean and answer accordingly and then you're going to get to this last step where you're going to be asked how you want to receive your EIN letter and we recommend that you choose that first option receive letter online because it will give you the pds basically right there and you can print out or save it download it versus receiving it by mail which will take longer one thing that I also want to go back to for this responsible party if it's someone who does not have a social security number maybe you have that ITIN number that's an individual taxpayer ID number it likely will not allow you to obtain this EIN through this online form you could try it but usually you see that people with ITIN get a error message saying that they can't get it and in that case they would have to submit a form, a paper form via fax to the IRS and it can take a little longer sometimes take it up even up to two months so be mindful of that but otherwise you should then receive your EIN letter and you'll have that number and so then after you have that number if you pick back on our checklist in the order that we're using your next step is to register with San Francisco so this is information about our San Francisco business registration with San Francisco business tax regulations code generally requires that every person or entity engaging in business within the city for any part of seven or more days in a year must register and you generally have 15 days from the day that you begin to come in and get registered so a lot of times to get full output how quickly can I register, you can start right away and you'll actually give you that 15 window period 50 day window period too to come in and get registered anything dated so the application is going to have a question about the start date of San Francisco and if that date is one in 50 days you will be penalized because you should have registered within 50 days so keep that in mind the city we operate on a fiscal calendar last from July 1st through June 30th so we are right now towards the end of our year if you are registering at this time you will pay for the current registration year and you'll also be billed for the upcoming year that begins July 1st so to the extent that you can wait to begin your business until July 1st you might want to consider that otherwise know that you will be paying for two years it's current year and the upcoming year so I think that's the third bullet point said if you've been registered for January ballot for one year however look at this after the beginning of the fiscal year and even up till June 30th if you want to come in and fill out that registration on June 30th you're going to be charged for a whole year for that one day so keep that in mind we get a lot of people who will come in and register now or maybe they did the registration stuff but then now we're receiving notices to renew so our renewal is always in May and it has to be renewed by the last day of May so yeah sometimes people get confused with that and say like oh do I have to pay like every two months or every three months depending on when they did it and let's tell us now it's just that you came in later in the year and so it wasn't valid for very long but now once you renew in May it'll be valid for a whole year and you won't have to be in the new until the next day fees are based on the start date this activity is going to be a section on the application that asks you to list or note your list activities and it's also the fees based on estimated gross receipts so you're going to be asked on the application estimate your gross receipts for the current calendar year and there's a piece that I'll show you the business registration is not a business permit or a license some businesses will additionally need business licenses or operational permit and they may also need to file a pay business taxes but we do have a small business exception for our San Francisco general business tax so that's what we're talking about right now is the San Francisco business registration everyone that does business in San Francisco needs to have this but not everybody will pay San Francisco business tax and I'll talk about that more in a later slide so this is a little bit more this slide is a little bit more information about the business registration San Francisco business registration basically if any of these items are true on the left-hand side that is who is required to register we get a lot of questions about this often so really again anyone doing the tier or another example like here is there's a company that is not based here necessarily maybe they're based in LA or New York but if they have employees working remotely from their residence or that company in San Francisco then that company that's based outside of San Francisco has what we call nexus in San Francisco and therefore we register with us as well and that would be the W-2 employee that might be working for that company here which we're seeing a lot of people and we saw a lot more of that people working remotely any place really so keep that in mind that this is another yeah basically a list of who needs to be registered here and then on the right-hand side is the fee schedule you get two different fee schedules there's only three types of businesses that will follow your schedule B those are retail wholesale and something called pertinent services so retail, wholesale and pertinent services and you'll see all the screenshots of the application the list and where you might fall into and also if you do select multiple activities and they follow both schedule A and schedule B the fee will default to the higher amount and so again you'll have to activate your gross receipts and so if you're activating gross receipts for anywhere between zero and 100,000 and your fee is a minimum amount which is either 54 or 44 plus a $4 state fee and that's how the fee is determined the fee schedule has gone up lately for the new year it will begin July 1 there's another slide that shows that but here's another slide that talks about the business registration when you go to this website it's highlighted here in yellow that's where you would find the new business registration application so you would click on this new business registration application there's also some other information down here that you can preview but basically you'll click on that business registration application you'll create the sections of the application then you will submit it, once you submit it you'll receive an email the documentation and then once you've got your application you'll receive another email to pay the registration fee so it's something to note on the business application something to note I should say that you will need your tax ID number so again that's either going to be your social security number if you're going to be filing as an individual social provider or it's going to be or your itent if you don't have a social and you're an individual or it's going to be an EIN that EIN number of the IRS that's those for general partnership or a loan saved or corporation so you will need that number you also want to research the business name so these are the three sites that we suggest that you search for business names but this goes for also when you're thinking about a name for your LLC or corporation you want to search all these databases again this search is largely for you to determine how comfortable you are going forward with the name that you have selected or kind of knowing what's out there and so again stay away from anything exactly the same or too similar particularly if it's the same line of business, same activities in the same or general area that you're operating in is the business identification section of the application there's several sections of the application we'll look at that but there's one section called business identification and it says business name so a lot of people actually serve business name there but in fact if you're a local proprietor or a general partner you should be looking at individuals first and last name here otherwise LLC and corporations will list the LLC or corporation name as filed on its articles of organization or articles of incorporation this is one thing where I see a lot of people mess up because they list the business name here because it says business name so the application is not very intuitive so this is why I think it is though and if you ever have questions just give us a call there's a question or a section on taxes and fees on this application and most of those don't apply to most of the business that we see come through our office but if you have questions let us know and then within five to ten days after you pay you will receive these certificate except for mail to your address on record and you will also receive a letter from the office of the trainer tax collector and that letter will have a unique eight character pin printed on it you'll want to keep that letter safe because you will need to refer to that eight character pin in the future when it's time to redo or if you want to make updates to your account like change your mailing address etc so keep that letter handy otherwise you might need to request that your email is printed on that letter so during this renewal period we get a lot of calls from people saying I don't have my pin where can I find it so again it's going to be printed on that letter every May when it's time to redo you should also receive a notice to redo and that pin will also be printed there but it's not something that you're going to get via email it's printed on a letter so keep that when you receive that of the application so that you're going to see when you go when you click on that new registration application the first question again and this happens with most applications that are going to be selling out that have to be with a business one of the first things you're going to be asked is what's the structure who's applying and so in this case what is the organization type of this business you'll see this drop down menu and you'll see that we get oftentimes people who select LLC but they haven't actually formed their LLC yet so you want to make sure you're selecting how every work would be operating so I think at this example I also step to LLC so on the right top hand side you'll see that this identification section that I was talking about where it says business name and this is it says right under that extra on your income tax return so again because you need to think of LLC as a separate person or entity that's going to be filing its own tax return it would be that made complete with that LLC identifier at the end and to the right of that the tax saving number will be that EIN that the LLC obtained from the IRS for the LLC in contrast if it's sole proprietor under business name and if you're doing sole proprietorship in that parenthesis where it says as shown on your tax the tax return when it's a sole proprietor you'll actually see it says sole proprietor enter first and last name letter because oftentimes people are just putting their business name here so sole proprietors here will enter their first and last name and their social to the right then business start data for Cisco again if that's more than 50 days past backdated then the know that you will be charged the late filing penalty your telephone number your business email address your business email address there's a question here are you established the specificity of vendor with the city mostly this is also defaulted to know that's not to say you can not later like you want to sell for the city but most people are not sending this up because they're giving that and in fact if you say yes I think it will pop up another box where you could have providers with buyer number and then there was a time when the tax office was noticing sending notices to people that weren't registered that they needed to maybe get registered so this next question if you received a letter from the office try to tax collector instructing you to register there was a correspondence number so this is for a lot of people the tax office does that from time to time but otherwise let's say a business mailing address the next section you might when you put in your mailing address or yeah mailing address you might receive a pop up or like red text that kind of indicates like maybe the address was not correct usually then just double check it if it looks correct you can continue and it should allow you to move forward so so then the next section oh yeah here is an example of this we are unable to validate our mailing address again the U.S. Postal Service but again if I've reviewed it and it all looks good you like to tell you and it should allow you to move forward then the next step is change of ownership this is a change of ownership from the business yes or no and then owner details so in the case of an LLC you're going to go ahead and just copy from the business identification page it's going to copy the LLC name and your EIN but otherwise those here if you read it says for owners that are general partnerships registered with the Secretary of State list the full names of all partners for a trust list the trust fees as the owner for all other owners that are entities provide an entity name so that's why you would just copy but if you can simplify it you would put the individual information here again which might be the same as the copy from my description page owners address and then over here when it's an LLC you'll get this box on the bottom left it says business officer so you'll enter in your the officers or members in this case like I said LLC owner they're called members so I still that was my name you might say CEO depends how you know today when you registered with the State my phone number, my email ad officer stand to click on where it says ad officer to actually add me or add yourself and then if there's multiple you'll click on add officer again then here on the right-hand side you have the identification of this activities everything should fall into one of these activities if you're not sure you can go to the website and you can search for your code and you'll be looking to match like the first two numbers to see where it says accommodations and it's arranged between 72 10, 72 19 you're usually looking at matching those first two numbers so the website where you go to to check if you don't clearly see your activity listed here is Anderson AICS as in Dan C America I a blue N-A-I-C California S N-A-I-C-S dot com or actually just do an internet search maybe so like with Samsung and I don't see consulting on this list I can just type in consulting comma N-A-I-C-S and it'll bring up a code and tell me that consulting generally falls into number 14 professional scientific and technical services otherwise you can always use the activity not listed above but that's going to be fall to the higher amount but again the only three this activities that fall into the lesser amount peace schedule are number five one called third services number 16 retail trade and number 19 wholesale trade everything else is under 70 AICS then it will ask for all of their business activities fully with the San Francisco yes, just now then it will ask you to what is the average number of 40 per week including those outside of San Francisco what is the estimated statistical payroll percent what is the estimated San Francisco gross for fees and again based on this question number of fees how they determine the fees so anything between zero and 100,000 is going to fall to the first minimum amount all the other fees on that fee schedule that are not with that first minimum amount will be prorated at this point so you only pay 25% of the fees at this moment but you'll pay that for current year and just know that you're already being filled for the upcoming year but you do have until the 31st of May to pay for the upcoming year then number question number four does this business have passable business personal property expenses so this is any equipment, fixtures, supplies that you might have machinery in your business again in my example of a flower shop it's everything inside my flower shop so is there any tables that I need to make flower arrangements on and in refrigerators that I might have is a pass register anything that's inside my shop that's not for sale is considered business personal property so not the real estate but everything inside what this question is asked for is to determine whether it may be subject to that tax or that file so this is another tax state tax this is state constitution but it's assessed through our local assessor recorders office so annually they send out notifications to businesses to itemize and report all of their business property and they have to value it and they pay a tax based on that value of their business property so the official question here is to determine whether whether you might be receiving that additional paperwork to report a file of business personal property tax so will you say yes here the idea is that the tax office is supposed to share this information with the assessor's office and the assessor's office to mail you information about that file there is a small business section with respect to that tax that will exempt businesses whose property values are under $4,000 so if you're working during a business maybe like consulting example I'm doing consulting but really I just operate out of my home I just have my computer, my desk or maybe I use my kitchen table my phone that's probably less than $4,000 so I won't be subject to that tax but I might still need to say yes here and then just know that when you receive that documentation about that finally you can report and it will be the low value threshold and therefore you won't be subject to that the next question says does this include a grant for income for four or more residential units in probability yes or no that's usually known for a lot of the people that we assist is this business tax again it depends on what you're doing but it's usually known for a lot of our clients is this business is not sustained registration fees the only types of businesses that are exempt from paying the registration fee are generally nonprofit organizations but also families child care centers are exempt and they would need to upload a copy of their state child care license just as an FYI then there's exceptions about tax fees again most of these do not apply to most of the business that we are assisting these are for the utility companies themselves so you can usually say no to all of this but if you have questions let us know so this next section is location details here is where you would put the name the business name that's DBA or a fictitious name that you want to do business under so it's not very intuitive they call it location detail and location trade name but this is where you would put your DBA doing business as also known as fictitious business name, FBN trade name, etc and again you just want to search for it first then once you're comfortable with it you would note it here location start date and there is this question that asks is this a commercial use location in San Francisco so basically anything that's non-residential is commercial and the reason that they're asking this right now is that we do have a program to wave businesses new businesses or new locations of existing businesses that are commercial their first year fees so including their first year registration fees but also if any of them would have additional permits that they might need to obtain for the city whether it's a health permit or a building permit for remodeling those fees are all waived for commercial use in different systems for commercial locations so that's why they're asking that location address this is the address where the business is actually located so for many who might operate from home that might be your home address for those of you that will be opening up a storefront or something like that it would be that address that you would put here this is another question about some other services fees typically those don't apply but if you are doing short term rentals like Airbnb then you would say yes to that first one or if you're a parking lot operator or a hotel operator then you might say yes to the transience from the parking if you are selling cigarettes you might say yes to that and if you are selling sugary drinks like sodas and other sugary beverages or purchasing those beverages from outside of San Francisco then you would say yes otherwise if you purchase all those sugary drinks from within San Francisco you are already paying that sugary drinks tax so you can say no in that case location details then basically that's it you'll review you'll submit you'll receive an email to sign then you'll receive another email to pay this I'm kind of running out of time I kind of go a little bit faster here but this is a slide that talks a little bit about the business taxes so we have a general San Francisco business tax first one but it generally exacts a fall this is that gross under $2,090,000 so if you gross over that you might need to pay some of these taxes generally anything under that you will be exempted from fall business and you won't be subject to our business tax we also have that business property tax which I had mentioned this is the state constitution so you will find this anywhere in California that you go to buy items like furniture machinery and equipment used to run a business or such a property tax business personal property must be reported to be a such a boss is that valued annually for property tax purposes generally property value under $4,000 that's otherwise the tax rate is actually annually currently about 1.1 797% and now we have third party taxes or what we call special third party taxes these are these applies to our businesses so like the hotel operators, apartment law operators they are required to collect the tax from the customer client and they're going to report that and pay that to the city so that's your sugary drinks tax too you are purchasing your sugary beverages from outside of the city and not already paying that tax and it's up to you as someone in San Francisco that's going to be selling sugary drinks or tap bays or markets any of those that might be purchasing outside of the city will be responsible for collecting that tax and paying reporting and paying that tax to the city so keep that in mind taxes this is applied on business registration renewal but again it is due by the end of this month so for any of you who are on here that might already be registered you should have already received a notice from the Office of Treasure tax collector reminding you to review you do have until the 31st to review if you're going to close your business you have until the 30th to close the business but otherwise you will want to review and this is that you will go to this is the information that you will need to complete your renewal again you will need that online PIN which is found in a prior renewal notice or in a letter that you received from when you first registered if you kept that if you do not have it you can request a new PIN it will reset it and it will be mailed the PIN to your mailing address on record so you want to make sure that your mailing address is current if you're a sole proprietor then you can come into City Hall and get that PIN in person on the spot you will need to print ID but only sole proprietors are able to get the PIN on the spot all other types of entities will need to fill in this request to PIN and then wait for it to be mailed to you which can take about five days so definitely don't wait until the last minute if you cannot locate your PIN for your 2022 taxable term so gross receipts and then here on the right is our new PIN schedule for the new year so again depending on your gross receipts the PIN went up slightly, couple dollars not much that's their renewal slide this is where you go so after you register you may need to file a petition if that's applicable to you so if you're doing this under a different name then the legal name of the owner you would again want to search all these sites before you start filling some of these forms out but after you register and only after you register you would then have to file a petition that they date them for and that could file with the county clerk of the county where you have your principal place of business so if you are here in San Francisco that's here in San Francisco but we have a lot of times people that operate in San Francisco are not based here so they might have caterers or construction companies that are based outside of the city but they come in to them because it's supposed to do work so they need to be registered with us but their petition needs to be filed in the county where they are based out of so this is a slide that talks about that the fee is $60 for one registrant that's in one person or an additional person or each additional name and then part of the filing of the petition name requires that you publish the name in a newspaper and so that has to be published in the paper one day a week for four consecutive weeks at the end of the fourth week you're going to file proofs back with the county clerk's office that that was done some of the publications do that for you you'll want to double check this is a slide that shows when you go to these sites to search I'm sorry I'm rushing through this we're running out of time this is a physical thing it has to be done in person or by mail so best to do it in person is automatic please note that their office closes at 4 p.m so they stop at 50 people by 4 so you want to make sure that you're here sooner than that and this is the list of publications that you can choose from this is a little bit of information about that but basically again the name has to appear in one of these publications one day a week for four consecutive weeks at the end of the fourth week there has to be proof files back with the county clerk's office that that was done so here we've given you a range of their fees we recommend both with one that says filing be included because basically that will take care of that pool filing for you so one day a week, four weeks that's proof files on your behalf this is a slide that shows some of our additional agencies a little bit bigger so as I mentioned earlier the health department if you are selling food you would additionally need a health permit from them the sellers permit from the state but we hear our state on the right this is just a visual of some of our additional departments the permits that they administer so when in doubt just give us a call come in and we'll we'll tell you exactly what needed for what you're doing zoning and land to so definitely before any of you who are thinking of opening up a store for us we never ever ever want to sign a lease before you confirm that you can offer your particular type of assistance in that phase that you have identified so ideally you're looking at places you're taking down addresses and then you're coming to the city of our permit center staff over at our permit center or permit specialist over at the permit center who you want to contact to the state or just visit the permit center and plan the permits also there you would give them an address it would tell them I want to open up a cafe at this location canine or what is required for me to do so if it wasn't already a cafe or restaurant limited restaurant then you might have to do something called change of use or conditional use prop H is a new program that helps get through that building permit faster so take a look at that reach out to our permit specialist at the permit center if this is something that you are looking to do and if you need help confirming then don't need an understanding what's going to be required for you to locate somewhere so I also say even if this was already previously a cafe if it's been closed you want to or it's just better to always double check you never know what position somebody else might have been operating previously maybe they did go through the proper challenges didn't get the proper approval so always double check and don't sign a lease before you defer and you know and you understand the process that you will have to undergo to operate there sometimes it could be a long process and you want to be prepared for that because you might need to ask the landlord to give you six months free rent because this process is going to take that longer and longer so definitely keep that in mind here is information about some of the resources around small businesses and accessibility so we have a page on our website that's good to do is visit our website and review everything you need to know about ADA and small businesses there is a requirement for commercial landlords to give you a notification either telling you that the place has been accessible or telling you that you might need to be responsible for maybe an accessibility improvement to the space there's also the city program accessible business entrance program that requires property owners to make their ground floor commercial entrances accessible but not so cool business so when you're a cafe or salon you also have to have a restroom that's available to your patrons and so you'll want to make sure that that's accessible we do have a grant right now that can help you pay for making your place more accessible so I'm going to share the slide about our storefront improvement grant so we have the ADA grant and then we have a couple of other grants what is called oh the SF Shine but within SF Shine we have two we have design services grant and it's a construction grant each of these it's up to 5,000 whereas the ADA grant is up to 10,000 and then we have a vandalism grant I know I'm going really fast but again we'll be happy to share these slides later and or like I said this is a visual information about the first year free program but again the first year free is like commercial uses and it waives your initial registration and initial like permit fees or so if you're a cafe it would waive your health and permit application fee which is of course a six hundred something dollars you know pay for your first year annual license fee which depending on how big the cafe is it could be a thousand or more it'll also pay if you're doing remodeling you can generally anytime if you're doing any kind of remodeling or construction or repairs you need building permits with the building department to do that work and so it'll waive those permit fees from the building department including the site permit etc so you have to register or add a new location by January 30th it is set to sunset January 30th of this year we are hoping that it might get extended but as of now you would have to register or add a new location and apply for the permit by that date as well here are some additional business resources we have our technical assistance provider these are organizations that you can go to to get entrepreneurship training one-on-one assistance we have our financing resources these financing resources here I will say are considered alternative lenders for people who cannot get a bank loan so if you're just starting a business you're likely going to have trouble getting a bank loan be likely your only option just expect that you will be paying a higher interest rate and what you can get through a bank these are typically prime plus four for the rate for these financial resources who do though right now have a loan through main street launched the first one that's listed here it's zero interest for startup businesses we definitely reach out directly to inquire more about that up to 100,000 zero interest for startup specifically and then we have our legal resources down here and then again we're to contact us and I know we're at time so I don't know if you still have time to take questions what do you say? are you available for about five more minutes? I definitely am thank you so much so I'll try to summarize some of these questions one person wondered if any of the partners that you mentioned resource partners could advise on small business taxes so we do have an organization I'll go back to that slide right here called San Francisco Small Business Development Center it's right here on the left towards the middle spot San Francisco Small Business Development Center they have professional business consultants that are available to meet with businesses for free I still don't know if they have a tax professional on staff but I do believe that they do have people who know about bookkeeping so that would be the one that I would probably suggest that folks reach out to for that type of assistance and if they have someone they would carry with them otherwise like I said they do offer some bookkeeping classes I know they have an HR person but I feel like our tax person is a little bit lacking something that we have been telling folks that is needed so they may not be available but if so that would probably be the best organization to contact okay thank you comments and questions about the waiver for the Secretary of State fee and then the $800 franchise tax board annual tax are those actually waived for new businesses so yes for new businesses that register between now and before January 1st of 2024 your initial violate or your LLC corporation is waived so rather than paying $70 for the LLC filing or $100 for the corporation that will be waived right now and the first annual $800 is waived as well the one thing that I will note with that though is that the first year annual $800 for an LLC is generally due within the first four months of forming an organization LLC now in May you'll count May, June, July, August that first year fee is typically due in by August 15 first $800 so that is waived but you will pay in April of next year your $800 okay thank you someone asked a great question what are some common painful mistakes that new owners make I think working on a business plan not consulting with lawyers or tax professionals to determine how best to structure their business we see a lot of times we're not operating in the right way like I said before or sometimes people are organizing one way with the state and then a different way with the city maybe initially they registered with us as a sole creditor or general partnership and then over time they were advised by their tax professional that maybe it made more sense for tax savings to incorporate I just had this come up the other day where someone's been operating well the registered with the corporation and probably have been filing their taxes that way but with the city they're still registered as a sole creditor or general partner and what happened during the pandemic was businesses that were in existence that were seeking funding from the government oftentimes they were realizing that they had created an LLC but they hadn't stayed on top of their filing so therefore their LLC was no longer in good standing with the state because maybe they had failed to pay their AMA dollar tax or they had failed to file that statement of information that's due every other year and so in order for them to get back in good standing with the state they had to come up with those taxes while meanwhile they were looking to get help right because they were suffering and so some people lost out on being able to seek advantage of the government help for businesses because they weren't they weren't filed directly or they weren't on top of their filing they had fallen out of their standing so that's why I think it's really important from the get go try to understand what is the best structure for you to talk take advantage of these resources that are available it's free so definitely take advantage and get the training and then know how under your belt before going forward okay thanks we have just time for one more question someone is selling items on Etsy does she need to register her business in San Francisco? Yeah so if that person is running their business on Etsy and they are located in San Francisco running that business from their computer at their home in San Francisco then yes that is considered having next to San Francisco and therefore would need to be registered Okay great well I don't want to keep you any longer Martha your presentation was so great super comprehensive I see that there are a lot of questions I don't know if it's possible to get like the chat and I can maybe try to reach out to some folks later is sure doable yeah of course or if you prefer also whoever has asked a question you can also email me your question to my email so this is our contact but my email is at the very front so I can share that screen it down for more time right here down at the bottom Martha.downend at ssgov.org email is going to be best because we have been really busy and we are we have a limited staff in one of three of us and we're still working remotely two days out of the week so if you are a colleague that can leave a message we are trying to get back to people if not same day next day but oftentimes we're at the counter with clients so we're not because of that so email works great I'm often emailing people back late so that I just want to say that be patient with that but we do try to get back to people by the next day. Thank you for offering that that's great so yeah I'm going to include Martha's slides and the recording in the follow-up email and please do contact the office of small business and also the library if you need any more help or have more questions but I want to thank Martha so much for your time and expertise. Thank you my pleasure thank you all and I hope you have a great rest of small business week. Yes happy small business week thank you so much.