The RV Entrepreneur podcast co-host Jim discusses new BOI filing requirements and other important legal and financial issues for content creators and nomads small business owners.
Do you really need to form an LLC when starting your small business? What’s the difference between copyright and trademark? What is the CTA, and why do you need to know about new BOI filing requirements? Find out on this episode of The RV Entrepreneur with Kimberly Decarrera from Springboard Legal.
Learn all about the new Beneficial Ownership Information – BOI filing requirements as part of the Corporate Transparency Act and find out whether or not your company is exempt. Kimberly shares tips for structuring your small business and bookkeeping for beginners. Jim shares his personal experience protecting intellectual property, and Kimberly suggests some important steps to take, especially for coaches and content creators.
BOI Filing and Other Legal Concerns for Small Business Nomads – RVE #335
With Kimberly DeCarerra of Springboard Legal
Your Host: Jim Nelson
GUEST BIO: Kimberly DeCarrera is a lawyer, CFO, and business strategist, helping growing companies grow in smart, sustainable ways to ensure long-term success. She has served as in-house Chief Financial and Legal Officer (CFO/CLO) for a fast-growing logistics company, started a fractional CFO service for law firms, and served as a consultant to many of the Fortune 500. She brings all this experience to now help startups and small businesses grow while mitigating risks and maximizing stakeholder value.
Connect with Kimberly:
- https://linkedin.com/in/kdecarrera
- https://linkedin.com/company/springboardlegal
- https://facebook.com/springboardlegal
- https://twitter.com/decarrera
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Springboard Legal: https://springboardlegal.com
CTA & BOI Filing: https://boiefiling.fincen.gov/
National Law Review – U.S. Corporate Transparency Act: Beneficial Ownership Disclosure Obligations Take Effect (BOI Filing)
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/us-corporate-transparency-act-beneficial-ownership-disclosure-obligations-take
Listen to The RV Entrepreneur Episode #335
Listen and subscribe to The RV Entrepreneur on Spotify or in your favorite podcast app. Or, read the full episode transcript below. Leave a comment, or contact us with any questions.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE RV ENTREPRENEUR
therventrepreneur.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Join the RVE community on Facebook!
facebook.com/groups/therventrepreneurcommunity
Connect with RVE on all your favorite socials
therventrepreneur.com/connect
Got questions or comments for our hosts? Leave us a voice message! therventrepreneur.com/voicemail
(NOTE: Audio submitted may be published on the podcast unless specifically requested otherwise.)
Got a great story or tips to share with RVE Listeners? Complete our Guest Intake Form:
therventrepreneur.com/guestform
The RV Entrepreneur #335 Full Episode Transcript:
BOI Filing and Other Legal Concerns for Small Business Nomadss
JIM: Do you really need to form an LLC when starting your small business? What’s the difference between copyright and trademark? What is the CTA and why do you need to know about the new BOI filing requirements? Find out on this episode of the RV entrepreneur with Kimberly Dicara from Springboard Legal.
RV LIFE: Welcome to the RV Entrepreneur Podcast, the weekly show for nomads, work campers, RVers and entrepreneurs looking to earn a living or build a business while enjoying the RV lifestyle. This week’s host is Jim Nelson. Let’s settle in and enjoy the RV entrepreneur podcast brought to you by RV life.
JIM: Hello again. It’s Jim at Live Work Dream here with another important episode of the RV entrepreneur. I say important because as entrepreneurs, we should all be concerned about legal and financial issues affecting us. And as my guest today mentions, all of us small business owners tend to be generalists doing a little bit of everything. That means some things can fall through the cracks if we’re not paying close attention to what’s going on. And I mean, more than just paying your quarterly taxes. Recently, I heard about the new beneficial ownership information filing requirements as part of the Corporate Transparency Act. Yes, the BOI filing is yet another form. Small businesses need to submit to the Treasury Department. Maybe you might be exempt. I am, but the submission requirements are vague and compliance answers are buried somewhere down the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network website. That’s why I’m excited to share my discussion with Kimberly De Carrera from Springboard Legal. Com Kimberly is a fractional general counsel and fractional CFO. And yeah, we started our discussion with what that means. But then Kimberly shares some important tips about establishing your business structure and bookkeeping for beginners. We talk about paying taxes when working in different states and collecting taxes when selling digital products online. I share some personal experience about protecting our own intellectual property, and Kimberly suggests some important steps to take, especially for coaches and content creators. Finally, I get some answers about the BOI filing and find out what the upcoming filing deadlines may mean to you. So get ready to take some notes and be sure to check the show notes for important links to make sure your business is in compliance with current law. But first.
RV LIFE: Ever wished you could learn more about RVing from the experts with RV Life Masterclass, you can gain access to a wealth of knowledge through online courses and a resource library filled with insightful guides. Whether you’re a novice RV or a seasoned traveler, there’s always something new to learn. Start expanding your RV knowledge today by visiting RV Life.com.
JIM: Kimberly, thank you so much for joining me today.
KIMBERLY: Hi. Happy to be here.
JIM: Since technically this is the RV Life Entrepreneur podcast, I ask all my guests two quick questions. First, just a simple get to know you. When were you first introduced to the RV life and what does that look like now?
KIMBERLY: Uh, let’s see, I was probably introduced to it. I’m gonna say it’s a freshman in college. I’m not gonna say the year because, yeah, I’ll show my age too much. When I was a freshman in college, I joined a kind of attached to a fan group that was RV tailgaters, and that’s how I got into it. And then chance came up in 2014 is when I bought my first RV.
JIM: Fantastic. And now you’re a seasonal RV or long trip RV type traveler. Fantastic. What does being an entrepreneur mean to you? What does it take to be an entrepreneur?
KIMBERLY: It takes a lot of tolerance for risk and adventure. And, um, especially when you’re first starting out, you’re a generalist and you’re doing a little bit of everything in your business.
JIM: That’s a common thread I’m hearing from all RV entrepreneurs that I have interviewed here. So why don’t we go ahead and just dive in here? You call yourself a fractional general counsel and fractional CFO. I had a actually a client long ago. Way long ago. A company called CFO to go is a fractional CFO like that, basically a freelance financial officer.
KIMBERLY: Uh, yeah. So the business model has been around for a while, but we didn’t really have a name for it because I’ve been doing this off and on for years, right. Where I have a handful of clients that I work very closely with, sometimes even as a part time employee. And I am just like every other C-suite executive. But you may not need me for as much time as a full time executive, or you don’t have the budget because honestly, I don’t come cheap.
JIM: Certainly you’re an executive. Why did you choose this business model for your own small business?
KIMBERLY: Because I really like helping other business owners learn and grow. And when you’re working with small business owners, they oftentimes are subject matter experts, right? They may be something like a lawyer, but not a business owner. And they don’t know how to run a business. So I work with these business owners to learn the basics of business, set them up on that strategic outlook. So it’s really like my passion. I like working with small business owners.
JIM: So let’s talk about them for a minute. What are some of the common ways a small business owner or a nomadic entrepreneur can set up their business?
KIMBERLY: Well, if you gave me probably 100 different people, I’d give you 100 different ways, right? We could get into the the legal things about LLCs and C Corp and S Corp and everything like that. But really it’s about the business idea, right? You have to have a business model. You have to have an idea, something that you can go out there and fulfill a gap or find a solution in the marketplace.
JIM: Awesome. So I think you might have just answered this with with. No. But is there any best business model for a solopreneur or someone just getting started in a small business?
KIMBERLY: I typically do recommend some type of either LLC or corporation. It could also be some of the kind of alternative business structures of PC professional corporation or something like that. But having a business structure that’s not a sole proprietorship, it gives you a sense of, I’ll say, kind of credence. You’re there to do business and you’re not there because it’s a hobby, right? So when you have a business entity of some sort that’s not a sole proprietorship, you know, you’re presenting yourself as a business and other people will treat you better as a business that way. Okay. So I do recommend something like that. A lot of people will say from a tax perspective, we’ll jump right into the S Corp. I typically don’t recommend that until you have enough profit to make the extra compliance cost worth it.
JIM: So I’ve seen a lot of, you know, small businesses, solopreneurs kind of jump right into creating an LLC. And you kind of suggested that my wife and I, we’ve operated our business for 25 plus years as sole proprietors. So is there a downside to that? We haven’t noticed any personally with the type of business we do. But what are the pros and cons of, you know, forming right away? I remember Dave Ramsey long ago said, you start a business with a checkbook and a business card and a DBA, and then once you have a target on your back, then you might want to, you know, form officially. But what did you say the pros and cons.
KIMBERLY: So the con is that later on when you do change over and you do incorporate or you do organize an LLC, you have to go in and change all of your bank accounts. You have to get a new Ein. You have to do a lot of administrative work. That is oftentimes a hassle, especially because that’s when you’ve probably hit a growth spurt. So you’ve got new clients or new customer orders that are happening. You’re dealing with the media, um, and marketing. You are dealing with technology. Maybe even employees got a lot going on. Right? So you don’t want to take a step back and have to do all that administrative work and potentially even doing things like rebranding in the middle of that growth.
JIM: Interesting. Okay. Good to know. Let’s talk about the financial side for a minute. What are some of the simplest ways for a startup or entrepreneurs to kind of start managing their bookkeeping?
KIMBERLY: Let’s see. First of all, you need to do something with your bookkeeping, right? Some people will do it with an Excel spreadsheet, right? Keeping track of their expenses and their revenue for their income so that they can find out what their their net income is. Right. But I typically recommend, you know, there’s about three different accounting and software programs. Right. Whether it’s, you know, the the leaders, QuickBooks, but FreshBooks, wave, Xero, all of those are options for you to get started with your accounting. But tracking it from day one, having separate business accounts, having separate credit card accounts. Right, so that it’s easy to keep track of all of that. And also make sure that you leave enough money for taxes. That is the number one issue that people forget about. They like they got the revenue coming in, they got their expenses going out. They’re like, that’s profit. I can spend that. You need to put about 30% of that away for potential taxes.
JIM: That’s the first thing that came to mind for me. And originally my my next question was going to be why the bookkeeping? Aside from, you know, quarterly taxes, which some new business owners don’t realize they do need to stay on top of, you mentioned, like keeping it aside and setting 30% aside. But our quarterly taxes, the things that you need to be most paying attention to, or what else regarding finances do you really need to pay attention to there?
KIMBERLY: Well, you need to make sure that your revenue is coming in, right? Depending on your business model, if you’re invoicing clients, you know, I’m a lawyer that sends out monthly invoices. I have to make sure that I get paid. And so, you know, a lot of times we end up focusing so much on cutting costs. On the expense side, we forget about the best way to make money is by making more money, selling more products, selling more services. Right. And then making sure that money comes in the door.
JIM: And identifying that profit. Because sometimes you think, oh, I’m making money. Look at this. I’ve got all these receivables. But then if you’re not tracking the expenses, you may actually be losing money. So what are some of the signs that it may be time for a small business to get some professional, financial or legal assistance?
KIMBERLY: I would say from all of my experience, is that you should have a good bookkeeper and financial advisor and legal advisor with you from the very beginning. That may sound very self-serving. It’s not. It’s more of, I believe, completely in the idea of prevention is better than cure, and I have a lot more opportunities to solve problems at the beginning than I do at the end. After you’ve already finished your whatever. If it’s the year or you’ve gotten into the contract issue, things like that that, you know, if we had thought about it beforehand, we would have a lot more options.
JIM: And it’s always good to have that extra set of eyes. A lot of our listeners are solopreneurs or just a couple buried in their own business. So when you do have that financial help checking the books regularly, you can kind of identify those things before they arise, like you said. So when it comes to like nomadic businesses and solopreneurs are, there any unique legal or financial issues that digital nomads face?
KIMBERLY: Definitely on taxes, right? If you spend time in New York, you’re gonna have New York taxes, right? You’ve got to really track where you are to make sure that you are paying taxes to the appropriate place. Right? Because we have state taxes. We have local taxes, even that we may be, you know, having to pay. We think, oh, you know, we’re everywhere and we’re nowhere. But that’s not the way the tax authorities see it.
JIM: So, um, aside from finances, are there special legal considerations that say, you know, the digital nomad content creator type of person should be concerned about?
KIMBERLY: Oh, there’s always going to be things, particularly if you have employees or you are an employee, right. Things like different labor laws are going to come into play. Things like paid time off, sick time. Right. That could be a big deal if you have employees or are an employee as a nomad. And then, you know, we’ve also got things like where’s your home state? If you look at a contract, we typically will pick a venue, you know, if there’s going to be a conflict between you and the other party, where’s that lawsuit going to be? What laws are we picking? And usually we do it out of convenience. We use it, you know, where our headquarters are, where we typically live, because that’s going to be easiest for us to go to if we’re a nomad. We actually can pick a whole bunch of different courts, but we need to have contacts with that court for jurisdictional purposes.
JIM: Interesting. You mentioned, um, working in different states. If you’re on the road and you’re selling digital products or say, dropship goods like we do, is it necessary to charge taxes in all states or just the domicile state where you’re established, or does it?
KIMBERLY: And I’m going to give you the favorite lawyer answer of it depends, right? That has definitely changed in recent years. Used to if you didn’t have connections, what we called Nexus, you didn’t have to worry about it. But now Supreme Court came back in the Wayfair case and changed all of that, basically because of the Amazons and the Etsy’s and the big, uh, marketplaces. Right. And then also, you’ve got the states are kind of catching up now, Georgia, where I’m based, for example, they have a new digital tax, a new digital sales tax that even if you’re selling digital products, if you don’t structure your offer exactly right, then you have to pay a sales tax, you have to collect it and then and pay it.
JIM: In each of the states where the customer is.
KIMBERLY: It could be where the customer is, it could be where you are. Yeah, it’s a whole big thing that not to scare the people. Sure. Uh, your listeners into being like, oh my God. But like, it’s a complicated 50 state matrix type of deal where, you know, we had to take what what you’re selling, how you’re selling it, the terms and conditions, and then apply that to all of the different state tax regimes.
JIM: It definitely is a can of worms, having looked into that, and it seems as though the feds haven’t necessarily caught up with the times, because if you’re selling a digital product and don’t require a shipping address, who’s tracking the IP address to determine where that customer is? I mean, is it just a matter of playing it by ear, or is there any best safe bets that like, okay, just go ahead and charge tax on everybody or what’s the safest way here.
KIMBERLY: Yeah, you definitely don’t want to pay taxes on everybody, right. That would actually get you in more trouble. Like you can’t charge a tax and then not turn it over to somebody. Sure. Right. So that’s gonna actually get you in a quite a bit of trouble. So avoid that. And so the next safest thing is probably there are various different sales tax softwares out there. If you are selling through Amazon or Etsy or the big marketplaces, eBay for example, they will do some of the sales tax compliance for you. A lot of the the Shopify and the other thrive card, things like that. You can do sales tax on them, or they have integrations where you can outsource that to somebody. So I would definitely look into those options, even if they do cost a little bit more. And Jim, I do need to correct you. Sure. Please do. You said that the feds hadn’t caught up. Sales tax is a state, state state level, not a federal taxes.
JIM: I was stumbling there and looking for the word and didn’t necessarily mean feds there. So thank you for correcting me there. You mentioned a potential mistake that some businesses could make there. What are some of the biggest legal or financial mistakes that you’ve seen clients make? Or small business owners kind of go the wrong route just to protect people here?
KIMBERLY: Uh, let’s see, from a financial perspective, I would say that they aren’t. And this even comes down to the legal side, but they’re not paying attention to the basics. They’ve never created a budget, or they wait till the end of the year to look at their books. Right. When it comes time to do taxes, they’re not looking at it on a regular basis. Those are some of the big mistakes I see from a financial perspective. Legal compliance. Right. There’s too many laws out there for all of us to comply with. Right? Even as a lawyer, I don’t know all of them. I’m not even going to pretend to. A lot of times we had to bring in various specialized experts on certain areas, uh, depending on what you’re doing. But there’s also a lot of ones that everybody has labor law. Right. Over time, tracking your time. Right. A lot of those type of laws that are basic that everybody has to comply with, you know, we still get those wrong in a lot of companies. And the biggest thing that I have seen that business owners do wrong when they’re doing this is that they forget to be honest, truthful, transparent, right. If you’re always going with the ethical answer, even if it hurts you personally, right? If you’re paying your employees, if you’re doing right by your employees, you actually end up in a much better financial position and a lower risk profile, right? Because even if you mess something up, if your clients, your customers or your employees, your vendors, if they’re not complaining to anybody, then you’re getting away. You’re quote unquote getting away with it. But they’ll give you a pass, right? They’ll give you an. Opportunity to make it right. You know, always just do what’s right by everybody that’s around you, and that’s actually going to go a long ways to reducing your risk.
RV LIFE: Irving is more than just a hobby. It’s a community. When you join RV life, you’re not just gaining access to a suite of tools, you’re becoming part of a vibrant community of fellow RV enthusiasts. Share your experiences, learn from others, and make your RV journey even more memorable. Visit RV Life.com to become a part of our community and start making connections that last a lifetime.
JIM: And it could be as simple as making sure you’re tracking all of your expenses and putting them in the right buckets. And one of the big things that come up with nomads is write offs. Say a portion of your living space or your rent. Are there any, um, standard protocols or tips you may have for writing off rented RV parks or a section of your RV that you’re traveling in?
KIMBERLY: Yeah. So a lot of it’s going to come down to, is this your first home or your second home? So I’m a seasonal RV or I have a home base that’s actually where I’m, you know, talking to you from today. And then I have my RV. So the only time that you can write off business travel is when you’re duplicating expenses. So if I am traveling in my RV for business purposes, then I can write it off. If you are a full time RV and you’re traveling around for business, you’re not duplicating that home expense, so you’re not going to be able to write it off. The other thing that I will tell you is that from a, uh, home office deduction type of thing, if you’re going to try to say, this portion of my RV is my home office, I want that deduction. It’s gonna be really hard to justify it. Right. If you’re ever audited because one, the space is so small. Right. It’s probably being used also as your kitchen table. Right. It’s being used as, you know, the table for the puzzles for game night whatever. So it’s not exclusive use that. You have to have to order to get that home office deduction. So unfortunately it’s not going to be the best for our viewers.
JIM: It’s a tricky little game there and you don’t want to raise any flags. Can an RV be a primary residence because a lot of our viewers don’t have a home even though they have a domicile address?
KIMBERLY: Yes. So the RV itself, for tax purposes qualifies as a residence. So for the home interest mortgage deduction, yes, it qualifies for that. Right. Well, most RVs do. Sure. Um, I guess I had to back up there because you have to have a place to eat. So you have to have a kitchen, you have to have a place to sleep. So some kind of bedroom and you have to have a place bathing type of, uh, you know, toilet. Right. So some van lifers are going to have problems because they’re not going to qualify under all three of those. I understood. But most typical class A, class C, fifth wheels, even, uh, travel trailers, they’re going to qualify. Yes. Now you still run into problems of the address. Right. And so for purposes of like voting your driver’s license and your tax location, again, the laws haven’t caught up to the RV lifestyle. Um, since 911, we actually have gone backwards in a lot of ways because of the Patriot Act requirements for things like banking. Right. They you can’t use a mail drop, right, for your address.
JIM: So let’s get back to kind of the content creation crowd listening here. What are some of the best ways to protect your intellectual property?
KIMBERLY: First of all, know that copyright is going to be automatically created. You publish it. You own that copyright. Beyond that, you know, then you have to actually go through and enforce it, right? If you see it out there, you’ll see on a lot of my stuff, I’ve got very clear branding. So my colors. So when I see it on Pinterest, it’s very clear that that’s my pictures and things like that. Put watermarks on pictures so that when I do see infringement, I can go in and quickly and easily put in a DMCA notice. And that’s basically where you go and tell the host it could be somebody like Pinterest or Facebook, it could be a web host if somebody put it on their website, but you can go in and say, hey, that’s mine, you need to take it down, right? And most of the time that works. Sometimes they’ll do a counter notice and say it’s, you know, I’ve got rights to use it. But that’s the process that you start with.
JIM: So we deal with that almost on a weekly basis with some of the marketplaces out there that people can just start a shop and people will steal our Tripod’s logo, our brand and start selling items and then spam. Ma page on Facebook with links to their item, and luckily that platform is very responsive. But I have the trademark certificate and the registration number and I can comply with their requirements by saying, look, here’s the proof that they’re infringing. Please take it down and they respond right away. If you don’t have that stuff in your pocket, is a like a first date of publication doable? I mean, oftentimes it’s like you say, it’s already copyrighted by doing it and you can say, oh, in 2006, I coined the terms tripods on this website, but I presume would also recommend, if you really value the IP to trademark it.
KIMBERLY: Yeah. Well, so there’s two different concepts here. Uh, trademark and copyright. Sure. Right. So trademark is going to be for your logos and brand identifiers. Right. So you can have colors or sounds or scents. Right. Like um, the Tiffany blue for example, trademarked or the red bottoms, soles of the Louis Vuitton shoes. Right. Those are very common things that we hear about that are not just the logo or the name that are trademarked. Right? You can have a script like Disney, right? Like just a hint, don’t infringe against anything Disney. They will come after you. They have the best lawyers in the world, like they are notorious for protecting their intellectual property. You know, like crazy. But so you can have a trademark. You have a copyright. Copyright is going to be great for the podcast, right? It’s going to be great for your blog post, your pictures. Your trademark is going to be more for your logo and your brand assets. Right? And you can, yes, go and get a registered trademark to protect it. That way you can also register your copyright, which you’re going to want to do for certain things, like maybe more of your courses, right? Or books, right. Because when those are before you can go to court to sue on the copyright, you have to have it registered and you get a lot more protections if you’re registered, you know, very soon after you’ve published it.
JIM: So you mentioned courses. Are there specific considerations for coaches and service providers out there that are like selling content?
KIMBERLY: Yes. So one of the big things, and I’ve had to work with several content creators recently on are your terms and your conditions. How can you use this content? Who owns it? These are licenses. You’re not actually transferring ownership of the materials, things like that. And then we’ve had to go in and enforce them against other content creators. Right. Because a lot of the information starts overlapping. And if they take your entire course, then we have to go and, you know, basically enforce our rights to protect our intellectual property.
JIM: Thank you for that. Because I was actually going to ask you specifically, are there standard disclaimers or contract language that can protect these folks? And it sounds like there definitely is. And you may want to get some professional advice on how you phrase these terms and conditions and things. Back to trademarking it. Say the coach has a catch phrase that they want to brand and put on t shirts and stuff. Can we talk briefly about trademark categories? I mean, some of them are so obscure and there are so many of them. If you’re registered a trademark in a certain category, can it help you have a cease and desist order in a different category?
KIMBERLY: Remember, that trademark is about making sure that there’s not confusion in the marketplace, that when you see this mark, this logo, or this catch phrase, that you know who it came from. So if it’s a very closely adjacent category, it can help you. But I’m not going to ever rely on that. Right. You want that protection as many categories as that you can get and.
JIM: Both domestic and international, because sometimes there’s just nothing you can do about it. If someone is doing the same thing you are, but they’re in the UK, even if you do have a trademark, right?
KIMBERLY: Yes. When I am talking about intellectual property, I’m typically talking about US intellectual property laws. Right? But yes, there are issues when we become international, right? When you have an infringer in another country and things like that, a lot of times it becomes a, you know, cost benefit analysis. Am I doing enough work in, say, the UK, since you use that as your example to justify getting a trademark in the UK, right? Or any other country. But then, you know, other markets, you know, like I’m an English speaker, I am not, you know, I don’t speak Chinese. It’s going to it’d be really difficult for me to break into the Chinese. Market. For example, I’m not going to take the time to go get a Chinese trademark, right? That’s not right. It’s like I give enough benefit to them. To me, even if they stole my content. Mine is so us focused that it’s not going to have as much, I guess. Application to the Chinese businesses.
JIM: Yeah, and it’s back to the cost benefit analysis. How much are they actually going to erode your own business? And and what’s it worth to you? A while ago you mentioned some laws and keeping up with them. Let’s get on to some current events here for just a minute. I want to talk about like what is BOI filing and the Corporate Transparency Act all about? I recently heard about this new filing requirement and looked into it still a bit confused. The Department of Treasury states an entity is required to report beneficial ownership information. If it is a reporting company and does not qualify for exemption. Their compliance guide sends you down a rabbit hole at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. So I thought this only pertained to LLCs and legally formed entities. Who needs to know about Boi and CTA?
KIMBERLY: So definitely if you have an LLC or a corporation, there’s a couple of other entities as well that would also qualify. Basically, the rule is if you have to file with a state to form your legal entity, right. So some trust also qualify under this. You know, that’s where you start. Do I have to file right. And are you a sole proprietor? If you are don’t worry about it. If you have another legal entity you need to file. All right then we’re going to look at exemptions. All right. There’s a whole bunch of of companies that don’t have to file at all if you’re publicly traded. Right. Probably most of the listeners here are not publicly traded. But, you know, we might have a few certain people that if they have a physical storefront with a certain amount of revenue and employees, they don’t have to file. Basically, you go back to the idea of what is the Corporate Transparency Act. It is to make sure that the government, law enforcement knows who owns companies, right, so that we can stop money laundering. Right? That is the purpose of this entire law. And so if you go, hey, we’ve got a bunch of employees with a storefront and, you know, $5 million revenue. We know who they are, right? They’ve got sales tax IDs, they’ve got, um, employment taxes.
KIMBERLY: They got all this stuff. We know who they are. But if you think about some of the smaller LLCs that aren’t registered somewhere, right, publicly traded with the SEC, they’re not registered with, um as a bank or an insurance company. They’re not regulated in those ways. Then we need to make sure we know who they are. Right. So that’s what this is all about. If you had an entity before January 1st, 2024, then you have until the end of the year to file. If you create an entity this year, you have to file within 90 days and then it’s going to become eventually 30 days. Wow. The filing that we actually give them is to disclose who the owners are, who the officers are, right? Important people within a company. Again, think about it. Who has authority that would enable money laundering to happen. And so we’re giving that information. We’re giving them our names, Social Security numbers, our addresses. Right. And so one of the big key things in this law is that we also have to update them when our address is changed. That’s going to be hard for nomads, right? You don’t have to change every time.
JIM: Sure you.
KIMBERLY: Change campgrounds. Right. But every time, if you’re your driver’s license or your passport.
JIM: If you relocate, which we often do every few years, you’re going to have to do that. You mentioned sole proprietors are exempt in this particular case, right? Correct. Fantastic. That’s good for me, good for some of us. But because of that, every other type may be required to file this. Deadlines are pending. So we’re going to have links to the BOI filing information in the show notes I see on your website, you offer quite a few courses that look very informative and helpful, but how can you help digital nomads and other solopreneurs out there getting started in their businesses?
KIMBERLY: Yeah, so I operate my my business. I won’t even call it my law firm because I do so much on the financial and strategy side of helping business owners learn what they need to do and then implement their growth plan. Right? So typically work with people that want to grow their companies. And you can go to springboard legal.com, and you can get access to a lot of courses that I do. But you can also contact me about working directly one on one with me and in some of the services that I would offer that would be very helpful for your audience. Here would be things like employment agreements, employee handbooks. If you’re, you know, when you decided to do that first hire, what do you need to do? How do you, you know, go through that process of signing up with the tax authorities and then also things like your LLC, operating agreements, your contracts, if you are a service provider. And so you’re a consultant and you need a standard contract for your clients. Right? I can help you build that contract or your membership. Uh, terms and conditions. I’ve done that for several membership sites. All of your website policies. There’s templates available on on the site that you can use. And then also if you need customized ones because you’re a little bit different somehow, then we can go through all of that work.
JIM: That’s great to know because back to the very beginning of our discussion here. You know, we mentioned often the solopreneur is the jack of all trades or the Jill of all trades and does all of the things. And often some of those things can fall through the cracks. So it’s good to know you’re there to help. Kimberly. What’s the best way to connect with you and where can we learn more?
KIMBERLY: So I’m on pretty much all the social media, you know, fortunately, Dikarya is a pretty, uh, unique name. Uh, there’s not too many of us out there, but on LinkedIn, it’s Kaydi Kerrera, and Springboard Legal is the company name, um, page, you know, Facebook and Twitter is at D Carrera. And then of course the website springboard legal.com. And hopefully here in the coming days, weeks, assuming that the government doesn’t totally destroy it. And we’ll be starting a TikTok channel.
JIM: Oh, fantastic. We’ll see how that shapes up. And maybe we’ll have another discussion about copyright and trademarks on specific platforms. Kimberly, thanks so much. This has been enlightening to say the least.
KIMBERLY: Thank you.
JIM: Phew… You know as the creative technical marketing guy in our business, I’m glad to have my wife as the CFO who meticulously manages our finances, but we also have a bookkeeper and a financial advisor who we check in with regularly. We also have a lawyer we can reach out to whenever necessary. I suggest you line up some similar contacts, if you haven’t already, or contact Kimberly at Springboard Legal Comm, and I’m sure she’d be happy to help. And don’t miss that upcoming BOE filing deadline. Check the show notes for more information. You know, if you’re anything like all of us RV co-hosts here, you wear a lot of different hats. And personally, that can sometimes feel like juggling cats. So focus on what you do best and reach out for the help you need. Let us know what challenges you faced by posting in the RV Entrepreneur Facebook group. You never know just who you might meet and where that collaboration may take you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The RV Entrepreneur is presented by RV Life – Tools that Make Camping Simple
https://rvlife.com
You May Also Like: The RV Life Podcast
podcast.rvlife.com/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hear All Episodes and Subscribe
