A "perk" of running a biz from home & working somewhere else.

[Bizzy]

Not sure if it's the same in the US..but here in Canada (Ontario at least) if you are a sole proprietor of a business from home, probably the best thing you can do is have a 2nd job on top of that.

As far as the gov't of Canada is concerned, there is NO difference between my income and the income of my business that I run from home.(sole proprietership)

So..

If I had JUST my business and it had $15,000 in gross sales in a year...but it was a bad year and I had $22,000 in expenses ( a loss of $7,000) I would only be able to claim my expenses UP TO my business income of $15,000...essentially having to "eat" the $7,000 loss.


BUT...let's say you work full-time for ACME and make $30,000/year add that $30,000 to the $15,000 your business made and you've made $45,000 and thus, you are able to write off/claim the entire $22,000 in expenses.

This may not be feasible for all of you..perhaps your biz is taking so much of your time that you couldn't possibly work somewhere else...but if you can squeeze it in, I recommend it. I'm lucky in the sense that my home biz can be maintained in 3-4 hours a day when I get home from my day job.

Last year, I made $45,000 @ my day job...so even if my home biz hadn't made a single sale, but cost me $10,000 to get off the ground, I can claim the entire $10,000.

[Peter T Davis]

In the US we have several different forms we can use for setting up our businesses. Sole proprietor is the most common, but not always the most advantageous. Other forms are LLC, LLP, S-Corp, C-Corp, Partnerships, Limited Partnerships... I might have missed some but those are the major ones. Each form of business has certain advantages. Cessna 414