The Corporate Minutes Book: A Legal Guide to Taking Care of Corporate Business (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Calling, providing notice for, holding and voting at meetings of your directors and shareholders necessarily means becoming familiar with a bucketful of new terminology and..." (more)
Key Phrases: state where signed, court hearing the lawsuit, account authorization forms, Secretary of State, Signature of Borrower, State Tax Information Department of Revenue (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Should be a part of any serious business library -- and any corporate library. -- Bookwatch

This practical guide gives step-by-step instructions plus the legal forms to be filled out and filed to keep corporate status. -- Orange County Register

Product Description

If you've taken the time to turn your business into a corporation, chances are you'd like to see it stay that way. Your business card may say "incorporated," but if the courts and the IRS think differently, it's closing time.

Because meeting minutes are the primary paper trail of a corporation's legal life, it's important to know when and how to prepare these minutes. The Corporate Minutes Book provides all the answers, instructions and forms you need to get the job done.

Tear-out and disk minutes forms include:

*Call of Meeting

*Meeting Participant List

*Notice of Meeting

*Certification of Mailing

*Acknowledgment of Receipt of Notice of Meeting

*Shareholder Proxy

*Meeting Summary Sheet

*Minutes of Annual Shareholders' Meeting

*Minutes of Special Shareholders' Meeting

*Minutes of Annual Directors' Meeting

*Minutes of Special Directors' Meeting

*Waiver of Notice of Meeting

*Approval of Corporate Minutes By Directors of Shareholders

*Cover Letter for Approval of Minutes of Paper Meeting

*Written Consent to Action Without Meeting

The Corporate Minutes Book also gives you more than 80 additional resolutions -- both as tear-outs and on CD-ROM -- to insert into your minutes:

*elect S-corporation tax status

*adopt pension and profit-sharing plans

*set up employee benefit plans

*amend Articles and Bylaws

*borrow or lend money from or to directors, shareholders and banks

*authorize the issuance of shares of stock

*declare dividends

*hire employees and contract with outside firms and businesses

*approve the purchase or lease of commercial property

*approve corporate contracts

*select a corporate tax year

*approve salary increases and bonuses

*authorize bank loans

*authorize a corporate line of credit

*purchase or lease a company car

*authorize the use of a corporate credit card to pay business expenses

The 2nd edition is completely revised and updated to reflect current law. So take a few minutes and read this book -- your corporation deserves it!

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Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: NOLO; 2nd edition (June 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0873378199
• ISBN-13: 978-0873378192
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #248,577 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Keep your corporate status. Record vital meeting minutes., August 11, 2003

By	Harinath Thummalapalli (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

One simple reason to record meeting minutes is to be able to retain the precious corporate status of your business. Otherwise, the courts may strip away the corporate status leaving the owners vulnerable to lawsuits. That's one of the many things I learned by reading just the first chapter in this book.

I first ordered it because I wanted templates I could customize for my own company and I had read that this Nolo book had almost a 100 different forms in electronic format (CD-ROM) that I can use for recording all kinds of important corporate decisions. But when I got the book, I was surprised that it was such a heavy book and curiosity got the better of me and I started skimming through the various chapters.

This book has more than just tear out forms and electronic versions of these forms. Keeping with Nolo tradition, it has about 20 chapters dedicated to explaining in great detail all the various forms that can be used for recording corporate meeting minutes and HOW to use these forms. It made eveverything really easy!

The first 8 chapters of the book are about how to hold the meetings and record the minutes (including How to Take Action by Written Consent Without a Meeting). The chapters following that include topics like 'Corporate Tax Resolutions', 'Corporate Hiring and Appointment Resolutions', 'Resolutions for Loans to the Corporation', and 'Stock Issuance Resolutions'. I especially like the discussion of Legal and Tax Issues Affecting Stock Issuance and Loans to the Corporation by Shareholders and Other Insiders.

This is probably the most expensive Nolo book that you can purchase (almost twice their cheapest book) but I didn't hesitate even a second to buy this book because I was sure I would spend hours trying to come up with my own forms for meeting minutes. I thought it would be better to just buy and use their forms instead. Good luck and don't lose that precious corporate status!

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Now Sold As "The Corporate Records Handbook", November 27, 2005

By	David Weston (Tempe, AZ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The new version of this book is now being sold under a different title: "The Corporate Records Handbook". Don't buy this old version.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the best book I've found, February 27, 2004

By	Robert T. Nicholson (Sunnyvale, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've recently set up several corporate structures for small business ventures. In preparation, I took a couple of short classes at a local community college and read several books.

Most of the information in other books was very general. They would say something like, "you must do X to protect your corporate status," without telling you *how* to do it.

This is the only book I've found that clearly describes all the steps needed to properly set up and maintain your corporation. It does not cover choice of corporate structure or the actual incorporation process, but instead explains all the things you must do to maintain the legal and tax protections provided by your corporation once it is established. It also includes an extensive set of forms, all on CD-ROM. The forms are supplied in Rich Text Format, also known as rtf, and can be read by most word processors.

(Note to Macintosh users - although the book says that the CD-ROM is not "supported" on the Mac, I had no trouble opening and using the forms.)