Dusting off the Congressional Version of an “Aged Shelf Company”

On April 21, 2020, the United States Senate resolvedthat the bill from the House of Representatives (H.R. 266) entitled ‘An Act making appropriations for the Department of the Interior, environment, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2019, and for other purposes’, do pass with the following AMENDMENT: Strike all after the enacting clause and insert …” the “Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act”.

Apparently, in order to extend the Paycheck Protection Program quickly, Congress needed a bill that had been sitting around waiting to be amended and passed in a jiffy. They found it in a bill introduced by Representative Betty McCollum (D. MN. – 4th) on January 8, 2019 for appropriations for the Department of the Interior for 2019. They took that aged bill off the congressional shelf, stripped it of everything but its existence and history, and have re-purposed it for the PPP and healthcare funding for the coronavirus emergency.

What Congress found was the congressional equivalent of an aged shelf company. What is an “aged shelf company”? Apparently, a leading authority on aged shelf companies seems to be Wyoming Corporate Services Inc., which provides some top-shelf information on aged shelf companies.

https://wyomingcompany.com/aged-corporation/ has the following:

What exactly are Shelf Companies & Shell Companies? What are the differences?

A Shell company defined by Wikipedia: “A shell corporation is a company which serves as a vehicle for business transactions without itself having any significant assets or operations … Shell corporations are not in themselves illegal, and they do have legitimate business purposes.”

A Shelf company defined by Wikipedia: “A shelf corporation, shelf company, or aged corporation is a company or corporation that has had no activity.  It was created and left with no activity – metaphorically put on the “shelf” to “age”.  The company can then be sold to a person or group of persons who wish to start a company without going through all the procedures of creating a new one.”

Here at Wyoming Corporate Services, Inc. we do not offer, nor have we ever offered Shell companies, so we are not going to spend additional time discussing them.

We do offer Aged Shelf Companies.  Companies that we formed ourselves, placed up on the shelf and have maintained all the State required records and fees.  We guarantee in writing that they are all clean and pristine.  They do not have EIN#, bank accounts, trade lines, D&B credit scores.  They have never been used and this is the reason we can make such a guarantee. Visit our aged shelf companies page to browse a partial list of our current inventory.

Who uses Shelf Companies and why?

    • To save the time and effort involved in creating a new company.  Let’s say you have a real estate closing or transaction and would like to use a Corporation or LLC and need it right away.  In most cases, our shelf companies will come with a PDF copy of all your Articles the same day you order, and you can utilize them that same day. In many cases a bank account can be established for the entity the same day.
      • To have the ability to bid on contracts.  Some jurisdictions require a company to be in business for a certain length of time in order to bid or qualify for consideration.
      • Leasing equipment.  Often leasing companies don’t like to lease to companies that are less than six month old.
      • Perception in the market place that the company has a longevity.  Maybe you have been a sole proprietor for many years and now have decided to incorporate.  You don’t want to appear to new or potential customers that you “just started”, but rather have been in business for awhile.
      • Privacy.  The reality of the world we all now live in is there is very little privacy or the ability to have privacy.  We are often lead to believe that anyone seeking privacy must be “trying to hid something” or they are “doing something illegal”.   Therefore, if we have “nothing to hide” we should filet and display all of our personal and business dealings for public review, approval and consumption.  This is simply not true.  There are many legitimate, legal and varied reasons for one wishing to keep ones personal and business dealing out of the prying public eye.  Fortunately Wyoming is a State that still believes citizens can and most importantly still have a RIGHT to do so.  Wyoming still has the Old West mind set that if you want privacy, you have a right to it.

Please don’t be misled or misinformed by the current furor over the “Panama Papers” and role of shell vs shelf companies. Do your own research – there is a lot of great, informative and accurate information out there.

Apparently, Mitch McConnell uses aged shelf bills to save the time and effort involved in creating a new bill.

Wyoming Corporate Services Inc. is offering its 245 aged shelf companies for $645 for a company aged less than a month all the way to $5,895 for its oldest vintage – July 2006. And aged shelf companies created in January 2019 – like the bill introduced by Representative McCollum that Senator McConnell has dusted off – are going for $995. Mitch may have saved American taxpayers some money!