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Failing to Complete Your Annual Minutes Can Result in Losing the Protection of Your Assets

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Published: 26Jul2007
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Do you know that your business and your assets are protected with the required documentation?

Have your business decisions been formally recorded as monthly resolutions?

Have your Annual Minutes been prepared correctly and in a timely fashion and updated as appropriate?

If you cannot answer "yes" to these questions, your business and your assets could be in jeopardy.

If you are the owner of a small business corporation you need to be aware that you can lose the protection of your assets, years of tax deductions, and your business if you fail to complete your Annual Minutes.

We live in an extremely litigious society. People sue other people every day. In fact, according to the American Bar Association, an average person is sued seven times in their lifetime!

If your business is sued, the first thing an attorney will look at is your Company Records, particularly your Annual Minutes. If you don't have records, the person suing you can easily make the argument that your business is just one of your alter-egos – that it is not a real business. If they win the lawsuit, they can attempt to claim all business assets and all personal assets. This could put your home, your business, your car, and any other assets you own at risk.

Businesses are usually protected by a "corporate veil" that makes business assets inaccessible to personal claims and makes personal assets inaccessible to business claims. Without the appropriate business documentation and company records, it is possible to "pierce the corporate veil" and hold you personally liable. You could literally lose everything.

Another risk for businesses with no company records is the possibility of owing the IRS thousands of dollars. Should your company be audited and not have appropriate company records and annual minutes, the IRS could disallow your business deductions for previous years and require you to pay that money immediately.

You can protect yourself and your business from these risks by creating an impenetrable "corporate veil." You can do this by ensuring that all required and appropriate paperwork is prepared for your business, that it meets the highest standards, and that it is maintained and updated appropriately. In addition to the documents your attorney created when you set up the company, you must ensure that monthly resolutions and accurate annual minutes are prepared for your business every year.

Your attorney can help you get caught up to protect your business. We, as paralegals, regularly help clients by providing a list of questions applicable to most small businesses. A review of the questions will jog the memory concerning business actions taken and decisions made over the course of the year. Then those "resolutions" can be properly documented to form the basis of the company's annual minutes.

It is never worth risking your business or your personal assets for the sake of doing the required paperwork, doing it on time, and doing it correctly.

About the Authors For over ten years, Kari VanNoy and Juli Walsh have been building their mission to educate and protect small business owners. They created Just A Minute, LLC to assist busy small business owners with their corporate and company minutes and resolutions to keep their company assets safe, secure and protected. To learn more about how they help stop playing catch-up and start getting ahead , visit http://www.justaminutellc.com .

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