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Symposium—Limited Liability Companies at 20

Viewing the title of this Symposium and, in particular, its cadre of famous authors, one is inclined to ask:  what is special about the twenty-year-old limited liability company business form to draw such talent to Boston and Suffolk University Law School?  The simple answer is that it has been twenty years since the limited liability company went from obscurity to being the business organization of choice for small United States businesses.

Until the release of the Revenue Ruling 88-76, some twenty years ago in August 1988, only two states adopted limited liability company legislation:  Wyoming in 1977 and Florida in 1982.  The decade leading up to Revenue Ruling 88-76 was troubling for limited liability companies.  The intrigue began in 1980 when a private letter ruling classified a Wyoming limited liability company as a partnership rather than a corporation for federal tax purposes.  Under then-existing corporate resemblance regulatory classification standards, a Wyoming limited liability company was classified as a partnership because it lacked continuity of life and free transferability of interests.  While it also possessed the limited liability and centralized management corporate resemblance factors, the regulations awarded ties in favor of partnership classification. . . .