The type of business structure you form decides what taxes and annual state fees will be paid and required to operate your business. The type of business also provides protection against personal liability and helps you file your taxes in clear and even beneficial ways. In other words, the choice of business structure you form (or do not form) is going to be critical to any future operations you conduct.
Here is a series of definitions of the small business structures filmmakers will probably encounter and form. These definitions are from the excellent small business resource called www.entrepreneur.com.
DBA - Doing Business As
A DBA is the easy, protective, fast and fairly inexpensive way to form a company and there could be more than one person named owner of the DBA. This also allows the business owner(s) to list legitimate business expenses on their taxes (on form Schedule C) for qualifying business expenses paid out of pocket and not reimbursed by the DBA company. The DBA also provides levels of legal protection against suits and legal actions against the owner/operator(s). The ability to use the DBA EIN (employer identification number or federal identification number) on a Schedule C to fully report the profit and losses of your business with no additional state filings required for the DBA entity itself is a great advantage to the small business owner.
LLC - Limited Liability Company
Most film projects are formed as LLC companies. So if you see an entity named...
"FILM PROJECT TITLE LLC" this is very common.
The LLC shields owner/operators from liability including law suits and allows you to operate a business in a slimmed down corporate structure not as serious as the tax responsibilities of, as example, the S-corporation. The tax requirements and formation fees associated with the LLC is higher then that of the DBA.