An extremely important distinction between a sole tradership or partnership and limited company is the concept of limited liability.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_liability To summarise: a limited company (ie Pty Ltd) is a structure which protects you personally from any debts a company could incur whereas a sole tradership does not do this. In other words you would be personally liable for all debts of a sole tradership. If you have significant personal assets (like a house for example) then a sole tradership might be somewhat risky. But ultimately the choice, like most things, depends on your personal situation. Seek professional advice from a good accountant/lawyer. Cheers, Josh PS I'm not an accountant or a lawyer On 11/05/2010, at 1:10 PM, Anthony Richardson wrote: > I'm not an accountant or lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt. > > You don't need a company, you can start as a sole trader, but you will need > an ABN. You will probably need a company if you want a merchant account from > a bank. If you don't register a company and don't want to trade using your > name, you will need to register a trading name, so a company might be easier > anyway. > > You will need to register for GST if you are going to turn over a certain > amount of money (forget the limit) but if you are trading to Australian > business you will probably want to register for GST so that your customers > get a familiar Tax Invoice with GST etc.. > > All in all having a company can make lots of things easier, but there are > setup and ongoing costs. If you want ot draw a wage you will need to register > for workcover and setup PAYG etc... although you may be able to get by using > dividends instead of a wage, talk to your accountant. > > Regards, > > Anthony Richardson > > > On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 12:27 PM, Joshua Partogi <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > Related to this topic, to start a startup business in Australia, what > do we need from legal perspective? Do we only need an ABN? Is there > anything else that we need? Also, is there anything like LLC here in > Australia? > > Kind regards, > Joshua > > On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 8:25 AM, Jason Kotchoff > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hey, thought there might be a few rails peeps out there who would find > > this interesting - I just got an article up at: > > http://www.ipitch.com.au/public/articles/bootstrapping-a-startup-for-under-1000-technology-cloud-hosting-sweat-equity/ > > > > and it talks a little about some pros and cons of doing your own thing > > (as opposed to taking a paid gig). > > > > > > > -- > http://twitter.com/scrum8 > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en. > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en.
