- Legal vs tax
- The holdco has its own legal form (LLC or corp) and its own tax classification. Subsidiaries have theirs.
- Liability
- The point is isolating operating risk below. It fails if you commingle accounts and contracts.
- Default federal tax
- disregarded
- Other federal options
- partnership, s corporation, c corporation
- Formation / maintenance
- Two or more entities, intercompany agreements, and separate books.
- Public-record notes
- A trust-owned holdco LLC can change whose name is on a formation record. That is still a public filing.
- Succession
- Ownership of the holdco is the succession lever for the whole graph.
- Investor fit
- Common. Needs clean cap tables at each layer.
Disqualifiers
- Paper holdco with one bank account and one contract stack
Professional review: attorney, cpa.