What Is Incorporation? The Definition of Incorporation

How Do You Incorporate a Business?

Anyone can incorporate a business. Incorporation occurs through Companies House, the official government department that manages the formation and dissolution of companies, as well as keeping records of active incorporated businesses.

To incorporate your business, you must register a company name, alongside who the owner/owners of the business will be, and a series of documents of formation that provide the extra details like rules of operation.

Registration is relatively straightforward if you know what to do. If completed properly the first time around, you could see the incorporation of your business within a few days of submission.

Want in-depth advice on how to open an LTD company? Read our blog!

Incorporation vs Corporation: What’s the Difference?

When you are incorporated, you become a corporation. Incorporation is the legal process of becoming a corporate entity, while a corporation is a business. These terms are related, but they are not counters or opposites or even different types of business.

An Example of Incorporation

In the early 1970s, a young Steve Jobs met with a young Steve Wozniak. They sold a modest amount of their new telephone inventions as self-employed individuals, splitting the profits between themselves. A few years later, the pair reconnected on a new project, after Wozniak revealed he’d been developing his own computer.

Jobs was impressed with the concept and convinced Wozniak they should sell the computer as a product. This time, they decided to make their business official. Instead of just selling products under their own name, they’d start a company and branded the products through the company.

In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, along with Ronald Wayne, incorporated their business into Apple Inc.

There is a lot of fanfare around the legendary technology company today, but at the time this was a very simple act. The big names behind this historic event make it seem all the more impressive, but if the computers hadn’t become the success they are today, then this act of formation still would have occurred.

Incorporation can be the humble beginnings of an epic rise to economic dominance, or it can simply be one or more people starting a registered organisation. Replace Jobs and Wozniak with a dog walker and dog groomer who come together and incorporate their business into a doggy care service and, as far as incorporation goes, the result is the same — a newly registered company.

 

Mint Formations are your experts in the incorporation of British businesses. Contact our team today to discuss your formation needs!