Looking for positives, but especially negatives. What are the pitfalls of not granting corporations the same rights as people/citizens?
Looking for positives, but especially negatives. What are the pitfalls of not granting corporations the same rights as people/citizens?
Because the line does need to be drawn somewhere. You can’t just go out, cause harm to someone, and then claim “Oh, that harm was done by my company, not me personally. Incidentally, my company only has like $20 in assets for you to recover.”
The paperwork also doesn’t entirely grant you the limited liability. You need to actually operate the company as a separate entity from yourself. If you “piece the veil” between individual and company, you may not be able to claim limited liability in court.
Why though? Why does ‘operating as a company’ have less liability than an individual?
The company doesn’t have ‘less’ liability, it has separate liability.
You wouldn’t expect that you would be responsible for the actions of a roommate in most cases. Creating a business entity separates the business from the person running it. The taxes are separate, the owned properties are separate, the liabilities are separate.
Say you own a small restaurant, The building it resides in (if you owned it) is owned wholely by the company. You also own a personal residence. Now a customer comes in and suffers some injury and they sue. They would sue the business and if it all went badly for you they might take ownership of the business assets including the building it’s in. They could NOT however come take your personal residence that’s not property of the business.
If you tried to do some shady biz and change ownership of the assets away from the company before a judgement was made then the customer could feasibly ‘pierce the veil’ as they say and include you into the suit personally.
You are explaining how, not why.
Why? Because it creates a separate entity. If you where to hypothetically clone yourself, should you be responsible for the actions of the clone? Perhaps more directly, assuming you work for someone, should the owner of whatever place your work for be personally/individually responsible for your actions?
That separation is created because otherwise nobody would ever employ anyone if their employee’s actions could get them sued personally.
Not all businesses, including companies, have employees. Sometimes they are just the owner(s) doing all the work.
Right, and there are more types of liability than an employee’s action…
See 2 comments ago. Nobody except the ultra rich could afford to go into business if it meant risking all of their personal assets.
And like already mentioned: it’s not less liability, it’s separate liability. Misconduct as a business (which may not even be the owner’s fault, it could be an employee’s) can risk all of the business assets, but not personal assets owned outside the business.