Multiple Corporations

I have a question for all of you out there who have multiple companies set up for your web empires.

Do you have all of your individual site companies under one "umbrella" type organization, or is each company a completely separate entity?

 

One corporation registered locally and federally, then I register the rest just locally. Report all income to just one EIN. If you are doing sole proprietorships or partnerships, you can only get one EIN. If you register seperate corporations or LLCs, you can have multiple EINs.

I wonder the pros and cons(tax, etc?) of one entity vs multiple.

 

An easy way to do it is to register the central corporation/LLC/entity, and then just get a seperate DBA for each branch. It simplifies the paperwork, tax, accounting etc. compared to having seperate corporations, and its legal.

 

Not that I am thinking of anything that could get me into trouble, but I take it that all of the different DBAs are the same EIN, and are the same from a legal standpoint?

 

Yes, your EIN would remain the same. The different DBA's would separate the different parts of the business. We see this quite a lot from businesses looking to accept credit cards, and we do it ourselves with a few different websites.

 

Ok. I'm not quite sure that's what I'm after. I was thinking actual separate companies, separate EINs, separate adsense accounts, etc. What I would worry about is I was thinking about having a site or two where I would hire someone else to do some of the writing, and I would like to have anything where I'm not solely responsible on its own account.

My home state, Georgia, has a statute defining a "close corporation", which is a corporation where there is no board of directors. The shareholder(s) act as such. I think structures involving these will be my best bet, although this is a way down the road yet.