Whether or not you need a legal entity probably will have to do with how much part-time consulting work you plan to do. IANAL, so consult an accountant and/or an attorney for advice. If it won't be a significant source of income, it may not be worth the hassle to set up an LLC. If you do set up an entity, LLC's may be a good choice. Many believe LLC's offer the best blend of benefits from sole proprietorships and corporations. You avoid double-taxation as in a proprietorship, you generally avoid personal liability as in a corporation, and you can share equity with others, to a degree. You also avoid a lot of the overhead that comes along with C-Corps. S-Corps are also a good choice, but seem to be less popular among self-employed's. Concentrico is an S-Corp, mostly because of the fact that we had investors when we started, and wanted to make room for more as it grew. A lawyer told us that it might make things easier down the road. Again, IANAL. Here is a "research center" run by smallbiz.com that might be helpful in choosing an entity type: http://www.smallbizincorporator.com/static/incorporate/research_center.cfm. There are lots of other places on the web with similar information. LLC's and other entities are not that expensive to set up either (a lawyer could help you do it for $200-$300, or the nice people at the state commerce department can help you do it. There are a lot of resources here: http://www.commerce.utah.gov/cor/How_To.htm. There are also a lot of companies you can find via the Internet that will do it for much less. One such company is www.smallbizincorporator.com. I have never used them, and don't know anyone who can... I just found them on Google. They will prepare and file articles of organization for an LLC in Utah for $83. I can't vouch for the quality of their work, or whether or not it would be a good idea to use them, though. Just FYI. For accounting, most smaller accounting firms should be able to help you. I recommend doing your own bookkeeping, but let an accountant handle your monthly, quarterly, and annual taxes, and payroll/compensation issues. There's a lot of stuff to remember, and it gets to be a drag when you aren't an accountant. (Frankly, I can't see how it's not a drag even if you ARE an accountant...) $40-$60 an hour is average for accountants, at least that's what I've found. We pay ours roughly $600/year, but I think he may not bill us for everything he does. (Find an accountant like that! I'd be glad to give you a reference - contact me directly.) You can do all of your own accounting, but it is a lot of minutia. The bookkeeping isn't that bad though - we need to keep track of bills, invoices and payments anyway. HTH. --sk.
>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/15 4:09 PM >>> I tried the archives because I could swear we discussed this recently, but to no avail. I blame the plug sysadmin. I'm going to start doing some contract work. I always hear these jargon-filled statements about setting up some sort of corporation or LLC or something, but I have no clue what that all means yet. But I set up my own DNS and mail servers so maybe this is for me. ;-) Where do you find the manpages about this stuff? We discussed getting yourself an accountant, that much I did find. Is that still good advice for part-time consulting work? Will any old (or young) accountant do, or do they have to specialize in self employment stuff? -- .O. Hans Fugal | De gustibus non disputandum est. ..O http://hans.fugal.net | Debian, vim, mutt, ruby, text, gpg OOO | WindowMaker, gaim, UTF-8, RISC, JS Bach --------------------------------------------------------------------- GnuPG Fingerprint: 6940 87C5 6610 567F 1E95 CB5E FC98 E8CD E0AA D460 .===================================. | This has been a P.L.U.G. mailing. | | Don't Fear the Penguin. | | IRC: #utah at irc.freenode.net | `==================================='
