Starting a Business in Washington
Running a business in Washington can look like a daunting task after looking at all the different Washington State agencies and trying to figure out how to start your business, and who to register with first.
We have made this page to try to make it simpler for you, and so you can understand the different agencies and their roles.
This is the order of starting your business in Washington. For all the links to the sites and contact info for each agency, please see our resources page.
-
Form your business with the Washington Secretary of State. This is where you either form a Washington LLC or incorporate a Washington corporation. You will then get a UBI number, and you'll be registered in the database that the other State agencies look at. You should always start with the Washington Secretary of State!
This will cost you about $180.00 if you don't want to expedite or $200.00 if you want it done in 1-3 business days. You can do this online yourself, or hire us to form your company for you right away. It's all we do every day.
- Get a Master Business License from the Washington Department of Licensing. This is a fancy purple certificate with a tree on it, that you might see in every Washington business establishment. This costs $15.00. This is basically a general, cover everything form that will notify all the other State agencies of what you're doing. You can register DBA names if they are different than your corporation or LLC name. DBA names cost $5.00 each. You don't need to register different dba names if you're working under your main legal name.
You can file this yourself, or we only charge $125.00 to do it for you, and when we do it, we make sure you get your contact info correct with each State agency, and you only notify the State agencies you really need to notify. If you do too much, you'll be filing zero returns and informational requests for weeks.
When filling out the Master Business License application, you'll notify:
- Washington Department of Revenue -- So you can pay your income taxes, collect and pay sales tax.
- Washington Department of Labor and Industries -- So you have workers compensation insurance on your employees.
- Washington Employment Security Department -- So you have unemployement insurance for your employees.
So, this process takes about 1 - 2 1/2 weeks to get the purple certificate back from the Department of Licensing, but you can begin working immediately.
You'll also start getting booklets from the other departments for sales tax, worker's comp., and unemployment.
Most people will fall under quarterly or monthly reporting with the 3 different agencies (Dept of Revenue, Labor and Industries, Employement Security)
On a yearly basis, you'll get a "License renewal and annual report" notice sent to your Washington Registered Agent. We only charge $65.00 a year for this service, and help you track your annual report due dates, and upload any documents into your online account immediately. We are one of the biggest Washington registered agents, provide more comprehesive monitoring and tools than any other agent, and cost about half of any other Washington registered agent service.
The yearly report costs $69.00. It's due on the last day of the anniversary month you initially filed with the WA SOS.
We get the report, and upload it to your account. You can file this online with your UBI number and the password on the report. If you don't get the report, you can call the WA SOS and they will give you the password. Please see our resources page for the renewal links.
That's the scoop. Washington individuals don't file personal income tax returns with the State, so you'll actually save money personally when your business does good by not having to hire a CPA to prepare a State return.
The Department of Revenue website is actually easy to use, and they answer the help phone almost immediately if you get stumped. It also calculates any exemptions automatically for you.
One of the nice things for Washington small businesses is the first $43,000 of revenue is tax free in Washington.
Washington charges a 1.8% gross income tax (Excise tax) but no personal income tax.
If you would like to hire us for our registered agent service or have us start your business for you in a couple days, we would love to meet you and help you out. You can sign up online in about 5 minutes and we'll get you going right away.
 Bookmark this on Delicious |