This is a Real Business?

Seems like a silly question doesn’t it. You’re here because you want to make money, and yet many people out there try to shortcut the essentials, only to find themselves lost, frustrated, or even worse, receiving a notice from the IRS that they are being audited for not properly reporting their income from the previous year.

Let’s start this off right.

1. This is a business. 
2. You will treat it like a business. 
3. You are here because you want to make money. 
4. We live in the USA and are under a system that requires us to pay taxes. 
5. You will pay sales taxes to your state for sales made in that state, whether you collect the taxes or not. 
6. You will pay State and USA income taxes on your business based on the laws governing your expenses and income.
7. Some aspects of your business will cost you money. This is life. Try to make up for it in things you sell. This is commonly referred to as Net Profit.

Whew! Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get on to some more interesting aspects of your business. I’ll always try to interject things that need to be done for your business, at a time when it is most appropriate to do them. For instance, I could begin by telling you to register with your State for a Sales tax ID #, and then tell you to go setup a Business Bank Account. However, this really doesn’t have to be done just yet, and there are some things that you need to consider first such as:

• What am I going to sell?
• Should my Business Name represent the product I am selling?

We won’t be discussing those things for a bit so to try and setup a Sales Tax ID and Bank Account now would cause you to do a number of other things out of order and cause you to think about things you’re really not ready to tackle just yet.

So let’s take it slow and easy, once step at a time.