Have profit- need to register business? find accountant?

need help making my business legal

[williamtell]

I am running affiliate marketing and receiving checks from CJ and others. How has everyone gone about registering their business? Do I form an LLC? Do I find an accountant?

In New York City and need some help.

[ezwebdesign]

Yes, talk to an accountant. I am in a similar situation and just about ready to form and LLC. You could remain a sole proprietor or just get a DBA (doing business as) and set up a separate business account to keep tabs on checks received from affiliate marketing.

[Receptional]

Also, try your local chamber of commerce - they are usually helpful (at least, they are in the UK...)

[eWhisper]

You might want to check out this site: www.businesslaw.gov.

I'm not a lawyer, account, etc - just someone who happens to be restructing their business and have had to read up on a lot of stuff lately.

The purpose of an LLC is limited liability. There have been many instances where the courts found the LLC was set up by one person for the purpose of isolating their own income, but did not run the business as an LLC, but as a sole proprietorship (a lot of this has todo with how you treat your bank accounts and if you buy stuff for the company from personal funds, or if you pay for household items from your company budget - an accountant can help you greatly with this). If found to be a sole proprietorship type LLC, you will not be insulated from lawsuits to personal properly.

If you form an LLC for tax purposes, but run it as a full company (most of us with few employees, loose structure, etc - will never fall into this), the feds might require you to be considered a full corporation, but mostly this doesn't happen unless you get audited.

The paperwork is relatively simple to form the business, however, eventually you should make a business plan as this makes it appear you are more of a llc than sole proprietorship.

www.sbaonline.sba.gov/starting_business/planning/writingplan.html is a good site to see the structure of a business plan, and even has many good examples of plans you can work from.

It's easy to get lost in the paperwork, don't let it overwhelm you, as in the end, you need a good product to make money, no matter how your paperwork is organized.