making what we do into a business

hey guys i was wondering if anyone has insight into what it takes to make this into a business. like if we are selling purely digital things (keep in mind im in the US)

  1. do we have to have a business license?
  2. hows the tax thing work (local, state, federal)
  3. any other pertinent information that i many have missed in this question

Those questions require hours of research and depend on your city and state laws. Go to your library and check out a couple books on starting your business.
If you plan on selling things yourself, yes you will need a business license and a tax license. Income tax is not the same as Sales Tax. When you charge a sales tax on your products, you are a tax collector for your state and city government. That’s it.

And your income from your business then gets taxed by Federal income tax and possibly State income tax.

lol well thanks for the leads i was just hoping someone might have input. quick question. my state does not have tax. if i sell to someone that lives in a state tax area do i have to charge the tax?

I suggest that you first try to join an existing company that is already in the business you’re interested in, and who needs another warm body on the payroll. It is a lot harder to run a business than you imagine … especially a profitable one … especially in such a labor-intensive industry.

You have to start with a business plan, including financial projections. When you start to “run the numbers” for any sort of a service business, you are extremely likely to run numbers that simply don’t add up. It makes far more sense, IMHO, to join yourself to a well-run company and to ply your specialty within that. If you prove to have genuine business-leadership acumen and interest, you might wind up in a leadership position yourself. (But, fair warning, that’s no bed-of-roses.)

in any other circumstance i would agree with you. but here in alaska thats not an option and i doubt a company will let me telecomute like that lol

Why on earth not?! Plenty of good talent in Alaska with a l-o-t of time on their hands when it’s cold and “the lights are out” most of the day. In the software business, I’ve done most of my work “remotely” for several decades now, and I assemble and manage remote teams all over Planet Earth. It works beautifully, and the only people who hate it are the landlords of office-buildings and the people who rent(!) cubicles. :slight_smile:

(You do not want to know how much a square-foot of glass walls and cubicles costs per-month!)

You don’t have to be “in a particular place on earth” to do this sort of thing. I would certainly not assume that “no company would let me telecommute.” You’re talented, you’re professional, and you live a long way from the US mainland. So …? It seems to me that you could make an excellent business-case for telecommuting.

Notice that I am describing being a W-2 employee of a distributed work-force. You still have (or, are the) management and meetings. (Yuck.) You still “show up for work,” at least part of the day allowing for time-zone differences. You are not tasked with “doing everything,” only your own particular role(s). You do not share the entire financial burden of the total project, and you get paid regularly. You get benefits. What is different is: where you are, and how you “get to work” each day. (And the fact that the landlord and the cubicle-renter don’t get money.)

I had an associate for a number of years who had re-programmed one of those “big red button” devices (sold for a while at office-supply stores) with a sound-clip of traffic and beeping horns. He’d push this button as he walked into the separate, dedicated room of his house which was his professional office, and closed the door behind him. “That was my commute,” he would quip. “Boy, the traffic sure was awful today.” :wink:

You can get all your doubts cleared by consulting any good master business licence registration service provider. They can give you all the necessary advice and get all the papers for your registration ready. You won’t have to worry all these things, as they are well know with business registration and those related to tax and any other things. So it’s always better to consult such personal and get an idea about how and what to do!

haha well that sure sounds like a good point i will deffinitly have to look into that ad develop my portfolio to apply for some of those

What I would do, in Alaska, is to canvass the business community in the nearest city to find out who’s doing anything-at-all having to do wth “computer graphics.” There are a lot of scenarios in which CG can be useful … “feature-length movies” are by no means the only one.

Furthermore, in Alaska, who just might be the best clients? Uh huh … somebody else “in Alaska!”

After all, “Alaska is a sword that cuts both ways.” If you’re in Alaska, doing CG work for whoever-in-the-world, and “you need to hire someone,” well, who might you be rather desperate to find? Bingo! Somebody local!

Given the fact that CG is both expensive and labor-intensive (people are expensive, especially highly-skilled ones, and computer-time is expensive too …), I would frankly think that it makes much more sense to join forces with someone else … in Alaska. Go ahead and become their employee. Help them serve the clients they already have, regardless of where-in-the-world those clients may be situated. You don’t have to shoulder the entire load of “starting your own business” in order to successfully pursue your passion. CG is most-naturally a collective endeavor, best achieved by the coordinated efforts of many specialists. Many hands make light work.”