Creating a personal company
"You're confusing so many things at once here...... First thing first: we cannot suggest you what to do business-wise since we have no idea about your business. How on Earth can anyone know if you should sell the software to someone or try to distribute to customers yourself? How would we know if you should hire employees or not? If you say you don't need employees - why would you consider hiring them? If you say you want to sell several copies and have your own customers - why would you ask if you should sell your code to someone else? Doesn't make sense. Now to some more specific issues: I heard sole proprietary companies doesn't earn more than 250k and   it's better to switch to corporation or LLC etc. because of benefits. I heard it was snowing today in Honolulu. So you heard things. It doesn't make them true, or relevant to you. There's no earning limit above which you should incorporate. You can be sole proprietor and make millions, and you can incorporate for a $10K/year revenue business. Sole proprietorship, incorporation (can be C-Corp or S-Corp), or LLC - these are four different types of legal entity to conduct business. Each has its own set of benefits and drawbacks, and you must understand which one suits you in your particular situation. For that you should talk to a lawyer who could help you understand what liability protection you might need, and to a tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your state) who can help you understand the tax-related costs and benefits of each choice. On the other hand I heard that if I create LLC company, in case of   failure, they can get EVERYTHING from me, what's this all about? No. This is not true. Who are ""they"", how do you define ""failure"", and why would they get anything from you at all? Even without knowing all that, your understanding is wrong, because the ""LL"" in LLC stands for LIMITED liability. The whole point of forming LLC or Corporation is to limit your own personal liability. But mere incorporation or forming LLC doesn't necessarily mean your liability is limited. Your State law defines what you must do for that limited liability protection, and that includes proper ways to run your business. Again - talk to your lawyer and your tax adviser about what it means to you. I'm totally unfamiliar with everything related to   taxes/companies/LLC/corporation etc Familiarize yourself. No-one is going to do it for you. Start reading, ask specific questions on specific issues, and get a proper legal and tax advice from licensed professionals."
"Equity does not represent production divisions in a company (i.e. chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla does not make sense).  In Sole proprietorship, equity represents 1 owner.  In Partnership, equity has at least two sub-accounts, namely Partner 1 and Partner 2.  In Corporations, equity may have Common Stockholders and Preferred Stockholders, or even different class of shares for insiders and angel investors.  As you can see, equity represents who owns the company. It is not what the company does or manufactures.  First and foremost, define the boundary of the firm. Are your books titled ""The books of the family of Doe"", ""The books of Mr & Mrs Doe"", or ""The books of Mr & Mrs Doe & Sons"".  Ask yourself, who ""owns"" this family. If you believe that a marriage is perpetual until further notice then it does not make any sense to constantly calculate which parent owns the family more. In partnership, firm profits are attributed to partner's accounts using previously agreed ratio. For example, (60%/40% because Partner 1 is more hard working and valuable to the firm.  Does your child own this family? Does he/she have any rights to use the assets, to earn income from the assets, to transfer the assets to others, or to enforce private property rights? If they don't have a part of these rights, they are certainly NOT part of Equity.  So what happens to the expenses of children if you follow the ""partnership"" model? There are two ways. The first way is to attribute the Loss to the parents/family since you do not expect the children to repay. It is an unrecoverable loss written off. The second way is to create a Debtor(Asset) account to aggregate all child expense, then create a separate book called ""The books Children 1"", and classify the expense in that separate book.  I advise using ""The family of Doe"" as the firm's boundary, and having 1 Equity account to simplify everything. It is ultimately up to you to decide the boundaries." Wow, your experience is definitely not unique. A close friend of 8 years complained about his medium sized company struggling to gain market share. The company I worked for at that time had a product that could dovetail with his product with some effort. I told him about this idea, and the ball was set rolling. I  had set up a small company to act as supplier of the integration service between these two companies, with all effort on my side being done at own cost, and the continuous integration cost being carried by my company.  The friend found a way to steal most of my source code, and got a developer to complete the integration system, while cancelling the contract with me on ungrounded accusations.  I realised that warnings from other friends about this guy's integrity proved accurate, and I decided to cut all ties since no money had been made.  If this had happened after I had quit my full-time job as was the plan and started depending on this business for income my family would have lost everything we had.    OP has the core truth of it: &gt; you may feel that your company is different from all of those other companies that have problems or interpersonal differences. Don't assume that. Trust your partners, have high standards for your performance and the performance of each individual in the group, but pay attention to protecting yourself along the way. Verbal agreements or goodwill may mean something to you but don't count on everybody else holding themselves to that standard. Turning your fitness passion and experience into a business can open up a number of opportunities. Starting your own gym may seem to be overwhelming, so here is an upportunity about personal training franchise. A partnership like personal training franchise enables even low investments to open home based fitness business, be an entrepreneur and still enjoy the continuous support of a big brand. Like just you fitness franchise helps in designing, building the location, doing some heavy duty marketing and assisting in every step of the way: http://hfbatman.informe.com/profile2769.html "Hello!  First of all, I think it's great you're asking the community for help.  Asking for help when you need it is a sign of strength and self-awareness of your own limitations (which we all have, even the smartest business people ask questions, in fact they ask the most questions).  I'm wrapping up year 2 of doing what you're trying to do and am finally seeing real traction. I am a bit older than you and started out on my own 7 years after grad school, but I have learned a lot and don't mind sharing.  Here's some things you might find useful.  * Never work for free (working for ""equity"" or working for ""exposure"" is working for free).  People who offer you this because you're just starting out are parasites looking to sell your talents but not pay for them.  The only thing you can take away from attempts to do this is that your talents are in demand, which is good!    * Never sell yourself short: would you rather do 10 websites for a $1000 each or do 1 website for $10000?  You'll be doing a lot of projects in the middle, but one very important thing to bear in mind is that one $10000 website is a lot less work and may make you the same amount of money (or more) overall.  * In the beginning, maybe you think you need to build a portfolio. But you'd be surprised how many prospects don't care what's in your portfolio and in fact never look at the portfolio, which leads me to the most important bit of advice:  * Learn to sell yourself.  YOU are your company's first and main product.  Learn to sell yourself (as the smart kid, future Fortune 500 CEO who stays up all night getting things done, etc)  * Always aim high in your proposals.  You'd be surprised how many people don't negotiate at all.  That being said, always put something in your proposal that is a good idea but it beyond what their asking for.  If they ask you to come down in price, remove this feature and come down a little bit.  * Develop an ability to read how interested a prospect is in your services before you spring the price on them.  At your age, I was waiting tables.  This helped me to be able to read a customer to determine which waiter they wanted me to be: the attentive one, the high class one, the friend, or the quiet servile.  Consider taking on a side job to help you develop this skill.  * As I said above, some prospects will sign on the line without negotiating.  You might even take two proposals with you into a meeting with a prospect, one priced high and one low, and present the version that matches their interests.  Go high if they need something ""right now"".  * Remember you are your company's first product.  This means also that your time is the company's first commodity.   Be open to other things.  I have a background in mathematics and am most capable as a software developer and a web developer.  But I also help other companies sell and support physical products not at all related to technology.  Because it's highly profitable, I do it.  * When you're a one person business selling your time at the highest price is the name of the game.  But growing your business will require the help of others.  I found it helpful to first network with other like minded people and split project money according to skill level and time commitment on a per project basis.  This will allow you to take on bigger projects.    * But growing the company will eventually require you to hire (or contract) someone at a far lower pay rate than what you're bringing in.  The laws of supply and demand require you to do this as a business person if you're to grow the business (so that the business has money beyond what you're being paid). This is where the extra money comes from: selling the time of others at a higher price than you're paying them.  Be conscious of this.  Everyone you work with is not going to be your friend.  * Make your website awesome.  It doesn't have to be a work of art, but let it reflect the seriousness with which you approach your customers' projects.  Make sure there are no grammatical errors.  Find a website of someone highly successful who's doing what you're doing and emulate it.  You don't have to have a portfolio starting out.  Your website is your first portfolio item, and if it's awesome, prospects will think you'll do the same for them.  Good luck!  I'm sure I'm not the only one here who thinks your early developed entrepreneurship is going to take you far." This is a great response, thanks. I appreciate Dale Carnegie, Sun Tzu etc, but after reading them I felt they didn't offer anything really specific towards running a business. I've just ordered the personal MBA after reading a bit more on it so thanks for that too. Prince2 methodology looks pretty in depth so that's going on the the 'later' pile for now! Interesting thread - I was going to go the route of writing my own reports on companies I invest in and posting them on my personal blog. A way to hone my research skills, signal to employers my research and writing ability and get feedback from people.   Good idea? There is no requirement to open a company. You can work as freelancer. You need to report income and file returns. If your income is more than exempt limit, pay taxes. Apply for a PAN number if you don't have one yet. I made the mistake going into business with a friend. I lost the business, a lot of money and that friend.  If you do it anyway, be prepared to lose it all, or set it up as one being the other's boss. Set up a company or partnership. Generally what you describe is a classic partnership. In the US - the partnership itself is not taxed (as opposed to a corporation), and each partner is taxed separately on the distributions. That is, the partners as a whole will be taxed on the income of one, if it is distributed through the partnership. Exactly what you want. Do consult with a tax adviser familiar with the Federal and the State laws with the specifics of setting it up and managing it, maybe you'll get a better advice from a professional (which I am not, of course). If you're creating an S-Corp for consulting services that you personally are going to provide, what would it give her to have 50% of the corporation when you're dead? Not to mention that you can just add it to your will that the corporation stock will go to her, and it will be much better (IMHO, talk to a professional) since she'll be getting stepped-up basis. Why aren't you talking to a professional before making decisions? It doesn't sound like a good way to conduct business. "In studying the great ""successes"" in business, it's clear that those who do the best have unlimited creative and business ideas, not just one idea, but many ideas all day long everyday.  No matter what you decide for your current idea, document (write down) your process of each step that you took from idea to inception and track one or two key metrics alongside, so your list would look like this:  1. Socialize idea, goal revenue $0, total cost $0, time 26 hours 2. monitor money invested, costs, and hours of your time 3. Brainstorm: What's the quickest way to have one paying client 4. How will I track my customers? 5. How will I connect and communicate with my customers? 6. And on and on.  From having an idea to implementation to even making money or a profit is quite simple, straightforward, and any book, mentor or online free content can show you how.  What is ""hard"" is maintaining motivation, stamina, and creativity for when REAL challenges come up, because they will!   Competition swoops in, in a way you that you (and the sage commenters at Reddit) couldn't have predicted, you are audited by the IRS and then owe way more in taxes than you expected from four years ago, you are sued for a small claims or worse, or you simply get bored or inspiration strikes in your heart on another great idea.  Problems like this require REAL and thoughtful ""creativity and implementation"" on demand, all day, everyday. This is what starting a business is really about. Tracking your steps means that you can easily and quickly review what you've done and backtrack or try another idea instead of wallowing in mistakes, missteps, or hard problems. It's really much harder than it sounds, but once you can invent more ideas to solve a problem than there are problems, you can overcome most challenges.  The framework is that, you want to start a business because it serves your customers, brings them enough value and delight to pay you, and you have a way to make a living yourself and/or sell eventually or have some ""exit strategy.""  You want an exit strategy so that your business doesn't become a poor paying ""job"" that you're a slave to. Because it does, and if it does, a job is way easier and makes you more money.  Write down each step of your business building process, track your costs, revenue, and time, and have fun.  Then, you have enough energy to ""pivot"" or change your ideas because you've set up a repeatable, improvable, process to run your next idea through with modifications along the way. You keep retrying your process for your ideas until your lifestyle is paid for (your salary) or something even greater monetarily." Mods decided to leave it here, so I'll summarize some of my answers on this question given @OnStartups. You can find them here, here and here. Your options are : You and your business are one and the same. You report your income and expenses for taxes on a Schedule C (for each sole proprietorship a separate schedule), and taxed at your personal rates. There's no liability protection or legal separation between you and your business, and you don't need to have any bureaucratic overhead of managing an entity. You can use your own bank account and have checks written to you directly. You can register for DBA if you want a store-front name to be different from your own name. Depending on State, can cost a lot or close to nothing. Provides certain liability protection (depending on State, single-member and multi-member LLC's may have different liability protections). You can chose to be taxed as either a sole-proprietor (partnership, for multi-member) or as a corporation. You have to separate your activities, have a separate bank account, and some minimal bureaucracy is required to maintain the entity. Benefits include the limited liability, relatively easy to add partners to the business or sell it as a whole, and provides for separation of your personal and business finances. Drawbacks - bureaucracy, additional fees and taxes (especially in CA), and separation of assets. Corporation is an entirely separate entity from yourself, files its own tax returns, has separate bank accounts and is run by the board of directors (which in some cases may require more than 1 person to be on the board, check your state laws on that). As an officer of the corporation you'll have to pay salary to yourself. S-Corp has the benefit of pass-through taxation, C-Corp doesn't and has double taxation. Benefits - liability protection, can sell shares to investors, legally distinct entity. Disadvantages - have to deal with payroll, additional accounting, significant bureaucracy and additional layer of taxes for C-Corp (double taxation). Selling corporate assets is always a taxable event (although in your case it is probably not of an importance). You have to talk to a lawyer in your state about the options re the liability protection and how to form the entities. The formation process is usually simple and straight forward, but the LLC/Partnership operating agreements and Corporation charters/bylaws must be drafted by a lawyer if you're not going to be the sole owner (even if you are - better get a lawyer draft something for you, its just easier to fix and change things when you're the sole owner).  You have to talk to a CPA/EA in your state about the taxes and how the choice of entity affects them. "I really have to use the business card for personal expenses, please assume that in your answer. This is very hard to believe. You must do that? Why not just have the company pay you $1600 each month? Then you can use that money for whatever you want. Why can't you do this? (I cannot think of a legitimate reason...) How to integrate the personal expenses in company? Anyway, to answer your question, what I've done when I accidentally used my corporate card for a personal expense is to code the expense as a payment to me similar to if a check had been written to me. If you aren't ever paying yourself, then you should just pay the company back the $1600 every month. As a side note, I highly recommend you don't do this. By doing this on a regular basis you are opening the door for piercing the corporate veil. This means that the financial protections provided by the LLC could potentially be stripped away since personal and corporate funds are being mixed. The unfortunate end result is that personal assets could end up being fair game too in a judgement against the company. Even if you aren't an owner, your relative could be considered to be ""using business money for personal expenses"", namely, letting a relative spend business funds for personal use. How to show more expenses and lessen the profit? If you're referring to the personal expenses, then you absolutely do not want to do this! That's illegal and worthy of stiff penalties, which possibly include jail time for tax evasion. Better to just have the company pay you and then the entire payment is deductible and reduces the profit of the company." "Actually sounds like an interesting concept for a business, potentially! (grin) You know, depending on where you live and how big the market is, you might see if there's a local ""concierge"" service.  These are companies that will act like personal shoppers/assistants for you in all kinds of ways.  I can't speak to the quality of their services or the pricing they use, but it would be a great place to start. I'm sure you can find listings of them on the web." That's the foundation of Limited Liability.  There is a corporate veil that protects your personal assets from that of your business.  The corporate veil can be pierced if you do certain stuff and thus your personal assets will get effected.  This allows people to start companies and innovate more and take more risks knowing that they could not be personally liable if the business folds.