Any body know what is the best way to start up your own small business? I am going to be doing private IT consulting and I am not sure what the best way to get this thing going is. I am going to be programming at first and once that picks up I might expand it to implementations. Hope someone can give some good pointers Thanks Mike
Hit up your local Small Business administration (http://www.sba.gov/). Get incorporated, set up a company account, read up on seperating your personal tax from your company's tax.
I have heard there are some sites out there that will do everything for you. Do you have experience in that. I just do not want to either forget something or over pay for something I did not need
That's barely the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot of preparation involved. You need to figure out where you are going to find clients, how to handle liabilities, where to get necessary equipment and services, how to market, how to do your accounting and on and on and on. You can outsource some of these issues, but you have to figure out if you can afford it.
Do you plan on hiring child labor? Importing slaves from Africa? Will you be chaining your employees to their desks? These are also some questions you might want to consider.
I design centricity(formally logician) EMR templates for physicians. It is using MEL programming language... I only want to this as a side business unless the money gets high. i will continue working at my current employer for sure money. Hummmm slave labor....interesting sugestion....lol
You need to figure out how you are going to advertise your services for prospective clients. That is going to be the biggest hurdle for you to overcome. For the short term you can operate as a sole proprietorship until you get a couple of jobs and know that you are going to be able to find somewhat consistant work. In that instance you are operating where all money revieved is personal income. I wouldn't operate like that in the long term, because personal assets and business assets merge, but for now it should be OK. If like me you really have no idea what you are doing from the start, get: The City of Houston One Stop Business Center Getting Started Packet It is free and it will walk you through getting a DBA, getting an EIN (you need one even if you don't have employees), and all the other basic stuff. And like I said it is free.
I went ahead and went with a company to get incorporated and to receive my EIN number. I have been in the field long enough that I know physicians all over the country that could use the help. Right now they have to figure out how to do it themselves or pay GE to create it for them. PRICEY But hey if anybody knows and an office or hospital using Centricity EMR and needs some form development done send them my way.
You have incorporated an entity? Try to avoid double-taxation. You may have some kind of special set-up, but in general, corporations pay taxes at the business level, and at the investor level. Setting up a LLC or Partnership (or in Texas, often some combination thereof) helps avoid double taxation while maintaining limited liability.
I think double taxation is only for C-corps. S-corps don't have to deal with that. I have an LLC but am taxed as an S-corp by IRS. The income is passed through to me and is taxed as such. Except for medicare which I don't pay tax for through my company but only as an individual.
