Starting a Business - Assignment Example

Starting a Business: An individual intending to set up the following three kinds of businesses: a pizza delivery business, a biotechnology firm and a web page design company will have to put into consideration several factors that are going to affect the setting up and the eventual running of these businesses. Starting with the pizza delivery business and the biotechnology firm, the major agency that will be involved in the regulation of their activities is the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA).

The FDA is an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. It is tasked with the responsibility of safeguarding public health by regulating and supervising the activities in the food and drug industry. Since the biotechnology firm will be involved in the manufacturing and selling of cancer drugs, it will also be subject to the regulation by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The NCI falls under the National Institutes of Health (an agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services).

It is tasked with the responsibility of coordinating the national cancer program, conducting and supporting research activities on cancer and dissemination of information regarding causes, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of the disease (Lusk, 2009).The web design business amongst will be regulated by the Federal Trade Commission amongst other agencies. This commission is responsible for enforcing federal consumer protection laws. It does this through carrying out investigations on consumer complaints against the companies in question and taking the necessary actions where appropriate (Lusk, 2009).

There are several laws that will govern the setting up and running of the three kinds of business. For the pizza delivery business and the biotechnology firm, the laws that will govern the running of their activities (such as the Public Health Service Act) will mostly be aimed at protecting the consumers of the products of these businesses from purchasing and consuming harmful products that might be detrimental to their health such as contaminated food or poisonous drugs that instead of curing ailments, they only makes them worse.

For the case of the web design business, the law that deals with this type of business is the Intellectual Property Law. This branch of law deals with the creation of intellectual property trademarks, patents and copyright (Burrow, 2003).There are several legal steps that one will have to encounter before setting up each of the three businesses mentioned. The first step will be to determine the legal structure of the business i.e. whether you want to register it as a sole proprietorship, a partnership or a company.

The legal structure chosen will determine any further registration requirements that you may have. Secondly, you will have to register the name of your business. In the case of a sole proprietor, the name will be the full names of the owner, while for a partnership the name will be that agreed in the partnership deed and finally for a corporation the legal name is the name registered with the authorities either state or local government. The third step will be to obtain your federal tax ID including the Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the Internal Revenue Service.

The fourth and final step will be to obtain the necessary permits or licenses for the business before commencing operations (Paulson, 2006).Each business will have a different kind of liability according to their legal structures. The pizza delivery business will probably have unlimited liability because it will be either a partnership or a sole proprietorship. The other two i.e. the biotechnology firm and the web design business will probably have a limited liability as they will be incorporated (Paulson, 2006).

ReferencePaulson, Edward. (2006). Starting your own Business. New York: Penguin Group. Burrow, Collin. (2003). Starting a Business for Dummies. New Jersey: Wiley & Sons.Lusk, Harold. (2009). Business Law: principles and cases. New York: Cengage Learning.