News
What changed for Minnesota businesses
Four beats: changes in the law, changes in how the Secretary of State's office actually processes filings, funding and program deadlines you can act on, and recurring formation problems worth knowing about before they are yours.
- In Minnesota construction, your subcontractor is an employee unless all 14 boxes are checkedMinn. Stat. § 181.723 starts from the presumption that the worker is an employee, and the escape route requires every one of fourteen conditions. Misclassification runs to $10,000 per worker.
- Earned sick and safe time starts at your first employee, not your fiftiethOne hour for every 30 worked, 48 hours a year, 80 hours banked. The definition of "employer" is a person who has one or more employees.
- The most expensive sentence in chapter 322C is one nobody readsMinnesota LLC distributions default to equal shares among members — not to ownership percentage. The gap between what founders assume and what the statute says is where the disputes live.
- Minnesota has three filing lanes, and the $20 premium buys more than speedMail, online, and the St. Paul counter carry different prices and different outcomes. For most filings the difference is exactly $20.
- Minnesota's minimum wage is $11.41, and the small-employer rate is goneOne statewide rate for every employer since January 1, 2025 — no more large/small distinction. Minneapolis and St. Paul set their own, higher.
- Minnesota's data privacy law exempts small businesses — from most of it, not all of itThe thresholds are high enough that most new businesses fall outside chapter 325M. But the one duty that survives the small-business exclusion applies to everyone, and it has teeth.
- Minnesota now forms 20 LLCs for every corporationThe Secretary of State's own filing statistics show new business corporations down 68 percent from their 2002 peak while LLC formations hit a record 64,484 in 2025 — and 2026 is running ahead of that.
- Minnesota Paid Leave is live, and it applies to employers with one employeePremiums started in 2026 at 0.7 percent of wages. There is no small-business exemption — only a reduced rate for employers with 30 or fewer employees.
- Calling someone a contractor when they are not is its own violationMinn. Stat. § 181.722 reaches every industry, not just construction — and it separately penalizes making the worker sign the paperwork that misclassifies them.
- Minnesota voided noncompetes — but not the three agreements people confuse with themMinn. Stat. § 181.988 makes employee noncompetes void and unenforceable, with only two narrow exceptions. Nondisclosure, trade secret, and nonsolicitation agreements are expressly untouched.
- Two Minnesota entity types pay a renewal fee every year. Most pay nothing.LLPs and out-of-state corporations carry a permanent annual filing cost that LLCs and Minnesota corporations do not — and it rarely shows up in the Delaware-versus-Minnesota comparison.
- Minnesota makes you hand every new employee a signed written noticeNot a handbook, not an offer letter — a specific notice with statutory contents, signed by the employee, kept by you, and provided in their language on request.
- Going without workers' compensation costs $1,000 per employee per weekMinnesota requires nearly every employer to insure. The penalty is assessed per employee, per week of noncompliance, and a willful failure is a gross misdemeanor.