Welcome to your daily briefing on small business developments in Colorado. Today we're covering 5 key stories including updates on colombia small business headlines, background & context. Let's dive in.
2 stories
The source is a Colorado-focused guide from LegalZoom that explains how to file a DBA, or trade name, in Colorado, including filing steps, which businesses should file, and related costs.
For Colorado small business professionals, it clarifies who needs to file and what it takes to operate under a trade name, helping with compliance and planning decisions.
A Colorado DBA, known officially as a Trade Name, is the filing that lets a business operate legally under a name different from its registered legal name.
CO small business professionals need this distinction to ensure their public-facing brand is legally recognized even when it differs from the entity’s official legal name.
Reach professionals in this market
3 stories
Buy-sell agreements among co-owners specify what happens at death, disability, or departure — but only matter if there is a funding source to actually execute the buyout. Common defects: insurance policies that lapsed, valuation methods that produce numbers no one can pay, and trigger events that include voluntary departure without a payment plan.
Without funding, the surviving owner faces a co-owner's heirs as the new business partner. Most buy-sell disputes that reach litigation are not about the agreement's terms but about the absence of a funding mechanism.
The S-corp election lets owner-operators take part of their income as wages (subject to payroll tax) and the rest as distributions (not subject to self-employment tax). The savings only matter once profit consistently exceeds a "reasonable salary" — typically $50K-$80K of pure profit above the salary baseline. Below that threshold, the added payroll-processing cost eats the savings.
Many LLCs elect S-corp status before they have enough profit to benefit, paying payroll processing for no tax savings. The election is reversible but not on a clock that matters in real time.
The federal EIN identifies the business to the IRS for payroll, federal tax filing, and bank-account opening. State tax IDs are separate, often required for state payroll, sales tax, and unemployment-insurance accounts. Some states issue multiple IDs for different functions. Using the EIN alone leaves state obligations unfiled.
State agencies catch missing registrations through cross-checks with the federal EIN database, often years later, with penalties and interest accruing the whole time.
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