Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: Corporations

Hello,

The short answer is yes, the corporation can engage in two separate businesses.

You would have to register your "foreign" corporation in Ohio by filing Form 530: "Foreign Corporation Application for License or Registration of Corporation Name", prior to doing business in Ohio.

The issue that arises is whether you want to have the same corporation exposed to liability for the two business ventures. If a tenant were to sue the corporation they could go after any assets the corporation owns. Most of my clients end up setting up a separate LLC to run their rental units.

Regards,

Re: Corporations

Most states require that you register your corporation with its Secretary of State before conducting business within that state. There is sometimes some latitude about what counts as doing business within a state, but in the case of rental property, it would be quite clear.

However, there is a separate matter that you may or may not have thought about, which is that there may good reasons to separate these businesses from an asset protection planning perspective. That is, you probably do not want to risk that a slip and fall tort suit could eat into to you California jewelry business and for this purpose, you would probably want to create separate entities anyway.

If you want to discuss this matter further, please call my office to arrange a free initial consultation.