In Articles of Incorporation, " The number of shares which the corporation shall have the authority to issue"?

What do I put here? I am starting a small tax preparation business in January. I will be the sole owner/incoporator/director. Do I put my start up costs and say every dollar is a share? Im confused. Help!!!

Public Comments

1. How much shares you are authorized or issue has nothing to do with how much you capitalized. Hey you are an accountant, No? Let say you issue 1 share only and you capitalize on $1,000 dollars. Then your book value of the 1 share is a thousand bucks. If you issued 1000 shares, then the book value is $1 per share. Authorized shares... this is the number of shares the company is authorized by the board, ( in this case you) are allowed to issue or sell. You may start with 1 or as many authorized shares at the beginning. later on if there is a need, you can authorize more by board decision. Issued shares... these are the authorized shares that is actually sold to investors,(in this case, you again). The company can sell none, part of it or all of the authorized shares to you. If you are planing to own this all by yourself, then put in your start up investment in exchange for all the shares. If you are thinking of taking in a partner, then issue half of the authorized stocks to you in exchange for your paid in capital and then sell the rest of the authorized shares to your new partner later on. You may want to do this instead of taking all the shares now and sell some of your share to the new partner at a premium. Then you will be dealing with personal capital gain tax.
2. The number you put here is your treasury stock, the stock you have available to issue. You don't have to have it relate to any particular number. Could be 100, 1000, 10,000, 1,000,000, whatever. Then, if you are going to be the sole owner, why not issue all the shares to yourself? Keep in mind though, if you want to add another shareholder later you will have to go through some hoops to increase the number of shares or sell some of your shares to the new owner. Hope that makes sense to you...