[Noisebridge-board] Noisebridge corporate status?

Mike Higashi mhigashi at gmail.com
Fri Feb 22 09:22:59 UTC 2013


Hi, folks.

I'm on the board of the corporation that runs BayCon, the science fiction
convention.
Every once in a while, I go to the California Secretary of State's business
search
web page and check on our corporate status. (We had trouble a few years
ago, and
I want to make sure it doesn't happen again.)

I did that again tonight (we were fine) but since I was on that page, I
also checked
up on some other corporations that I know.  When I entered "Noisebridge"
into
their search field, it came up with a status of suspended.  So unless your
corporation
operates under a different name, you will need to deal with this.

You can try it yourself here:     http://kepler.sos.ca.gov/

A California corporation can be suspended for two different reasons, either
from
failing to file the annual officers and directors form with the Secretary
of State's
office, or from failing to file income tax forms with the Franchise Tax
Board.
(Non-Profits that make more than a certain amount of money per year still
need
to file tax returns.)

You'll need to contact the Secretary of State's office to find the reason
for the
suspension, and when it occurred. (That info is not on the search results
page.)

A slight digression:  The person you talk to at the Secretary of State's
office will
probably list a whole bunch of dire consequences from being suspended. The
thing to remember is that most corporations get suspended from failing to
pay
taxes, and it's their job to get the deadbeats to pay up, so they maximize
the
level of seriousness by saying things like its unlawful to conduct business
while suspended.  The reality is that many corporations get into this
situation,
and as long as they get returned to active status then there's no long term
damage
that results.


Sympathetically yours,
Mike Higashi
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