Ok in part 1 we talked about the basic ideas for your business. Hopefully you have more of a vision of what your website is going to be. There are many people that just decide they want a website because they are going to retire rich in a month, cause that’s how its done. The next step after you decide on a business vision is actually pretty easy but you’ll have to get it done if you want to do legitimate business on the web. These two items are getting your DBA and then your sales tax agreement. With these two pieces you will be able to get a bank account for your business if you wish and more importantly be able to deal with legitimate vendors.
What’s a DBA you ask? Glad you asked its simply ‘Doing Business As’ registration in your local county. You will see ads online to do this for you….DON’T DO IT, IT’S A RIPOFF! This little item is only around 10 bucks and you can probably get it done within an hour if you live near your county seat. Some of these services charge $50 or more to do this simple task. First look up online with your county to find where you can file your DBA at. Usually its at your county annex. Next think up a name you want for your business. This doesn’t necessarily have to be your business name but it helps to be close. This will be the name that will probably show up on charges to your customers. Have a few choices ready as the one you want maybe taken. The clerk will have you fill out a simple form, record your business name and take your money. Easy and done!
You might get the form there or it might be mailed to you. You can now take this to a bank to open up a bank account for your business if you wish. More importantly you can give the information to your state sales tax department to get a sales tax license. This is the holy grail for dealing with real vendors. They will want to see it before they do business with you. You will be able to be a wholesale buyer at this point. We’ll talk more about vendors later but for now this is good information to know about who you want to deal with.
So for all this you are now the most basic business owner there is….the Sole Proprietor. If you get bigger you may want to change up your organization into another legal type of business. But for now you can get paid into a business account, order from vendors and yes pay sales taxes for what you sell in some cases. Just a side note the sales tax realm is changing quickly for internet businesses. So far no big deal for the small fry but it is something that you need to look into especially in your own state what’s expected.