What are the Characteristics of a Company / Corporation

A properly formed and registered company or corporation is inevitable for doing a smooth, secured, and optimally profitable business in any economic sector, at regional, national, or worldwide level. Therefore, all sectors of business and commerce, industries, professions, and services, have well-established companies or corporations. Thus, corporations are the backbone and lifeblood of economy in any country.

Serving the economy of the countries located worldwide for a long time, ours globally reputed full-service law firm of India, offers details about what are the characteristics of a company/corporation, in this significant webpage. A company is essentially a group of individuals or smaller companies, with certain business objectives and policies, for doing lawful business in any desired economic field, at national or international level. This company may be a profit-making or non-profit organization, and could be run and managed privately (like the private limited companies) or publicly (like the public limited companies). The private limited companies are not entitled to trade on the stock exchanges, like the public limited companies.

• Separate Legal Entity: --- A corporation has its own separate legal personality, apart from the individual legal identity of its all stockholders. Therefore, a corporation is fully enabled by the law to carry on its business in its own name, to own property, to enter into some business or professional contracts with other people of entities, borrow money from other companies or firms, pay all mandatory taxes, and to sue or be sued.
• Perpetual Existence: --- As a corporation is owned by the current stockholders, and run and managed by the contemporary board of directors and employees, the existence of the corporation remains perpetual.
• Limited Liability of Stockholders: --- The individual liability of each stockholder towards the corporation is limited up to the maximum amount of investment ever made by him/her in the stocks of the corporation.
• Professional Management: --- All activities and operations of a corporation are executed and managed by professionals (president, vice-president, controller, treasurer, etc.), who are appointed by the board of directors. The members of the board of directors are elected unanimously by the stockholders.
• Transferable Ownership Rights: --- Selling of stocks (in part or in full) rests upon the independent discretion of the concerned stockholder; and he/she does not require the approval of other stockholders of the corporation for doing so. Similarly, an investor does not need the permission of other existing stockholders or the corporation for purchasing its stocks.
• Ease of Capital Acquisition: --- A corporation is fully authorized to gather necessary capital through prudent selling of its stocks or bonds.
• Amenable to Government Regulations: --- Corporations are inevitably restricted or governed by the rules and regulations of the State and Central Governments of the country. These regulations are related with safeguarding of the interest of the stockholders, issuance and sale of stocks, financial disclosure to the Security and Exchange Commission, business regulation policies, taxes, exports and imports, etc.
• Additional Taxes: --- As the corporations are regarded as separate legal entities, these are liable to pay the corporate tax every year, unlike a sole proprietorship or partnership. The stockholders are liable to pay their individual income tax based on the dividends received from the corporate business.