The choice of juridical form is an important decision to make when starting up a company because among all the possibilities offered by law you have to select the one that is most suitable to the type of activity you are to carry out.

Exercising your activity as an individual company is the simplest and the least onerous. The foundation of the company takes place without any particular formality by making a number of administrative inscriptions (cf. starting up a company). As you have taken them on in your own name, all the obligations deriving from the activity will refer to your person, with the resulting extension of the company risk to the owner’s whole personal patrimony.

An individual company can also be formed as a family company when the owner’s family are collaborating (spouse, relatives to the third grade and kindred to the second) and their participation in the profits is recognized, it remaining clear that the family company is still an individual company in which it is the owner alone who must respond to obligations in connection with third parties. To constitute such a company you need to draw up a written act of foundation as a public act or as a private document that has been authenticated.

In cases where there are a number of partners, you need to choose between a company of persons, i.e., a company with a collective name (Snc), the simple company in limited partnership (Sas), the capital company, i.e., the limited responsibility company or, in some cases the cooperative. Companies of share holders in limited partnership and companies of share holders are to be considered capital companies as well, though these categories normally apply to medium-sized or large enterprises and so will not be treated here. Neither will we be treating simple companies used for fixed activities, i.e., those for agriculture.