Home address as LLC address

by Jackie
(Missouri)

Using your home address for your LLC address, won't that be a bit confusing in terms of your personal bills, utilities, even to your mail carrier, etc? Won't that seem as if you're already commingling your business with your personal life?

Secondly, could you further explain what is looked at as commingling your business funds with your personal funds. You stated you can pay yourself everyday from your LLC, how is that not viewed as commingling? Where is the line drawn?

Thanks for all your help!

Answer

We have clients in the real estate business who have dozens of separate LLCs (usually one per property or group of properties), and they all use the same office address. It's a very common practice.

As far as using your home address, that shouldn't cause a commingling problem. Sure your company bills come to your home, as well as your personal utility bills--but, you're not paying your personal utility bills with company checks, right?

Think about commingling this way, using a job as an example.

You receive a paycheck from your employer. It's a check written on the employer's bank account to you. You deposit the check in your bank account. From your bank account you pay all your personal bills.

Now, commingling would be if you took a couple of blank company checks from your employer and used them to pay your personal bills.

To avoid commingling, then, you simply need to only write the following kinds of checks from your LLC bank account:

1. Checks for the LLC's business expenses;

2. Checks for profit distributions to the LLC's members.

If you do that, then you are not commingling funds.