What Am I?

NeptunesMoon

Ok, here's the deal, I'm currently unemployed, out of college and working on something a friend set up under a sole trader business. I'm not getting a wage from it yet, more of a favour but I'll be getting 50% of profits when they are made and I do actually own half of the company even though he is the one who its registered under.

I now want to set up my own business, or a few.

The first one I want to get underway will be a service providing business where I will first of all be on my own until I get enough money saved up to expand and get a few employees.

While doing that, I also want to try and see if I can run a design website, which will be a .com going under my real name. This will be run just by me, all profits for me and will be used for selling designs both in Ireland and abroad.

I also want to try another website out, it wont be selling anything, but will hopefully make money from advertising.

I'll also want to team up with the friend, we have an idea for a business that will also be online and we will be running it 50/50 again.

This is doing my head in trying to figure out where to start. The above is the order I want to do them in. I read on another thread that if I want to have a few different sites and companies, I should register my business name as for example, my real name and then for each site I can have "real name trading as sitename".

Should I set myself up as a sole trader or a company?

Unfortunately I don't have a clue about tax or any of that. I also want to get the service business set up asap, within a week or 2.


If somebody could please try and help I'll owe you a big favour:D

xha1r

Excuse my possible ignorance, but how is it you own half the company when it is legally operated under sole trader status?

NeptunesMoon

I invested the same amount into it as he, I put in the same work effort, and we're in it together. He simply registered as a sole trader cuz it seemed the easiest option.

Colonel Sanders

NeptunesMoon wrote:

I invested the same amount into it as he, I put in the same work effort, and we're in it together. He simply registered as a sole trader cuz it seemed the easiest option.

I hope you trust your partner pal!!!

paulocon

Just reading your post there and the advice that comes to mind is to concentrate on one thing at a time. If you can manage to get one of your business ideas from the 3 or 4 you mention up and running, then you'll be doing well.

The day-to-day running of any small business is extremely time-consuming. Concentrating on one business idea and following it through will give you a good idea on what is involved from a legal and taxation point of view and you can apply any knowledge gained/mistakes made to your other ideas at a later stage.

As it is, the info you give is pretty sketchy so I'd recommend re-posting queries you have on an individual project.

Also, try and get hold of an accountant and have a chat about taxation matters etc. before you go much further.

Hope that helps..

hmmm

With your friend you are running a partnership, it would be wise to draw up a partnership agreement (there are plenty of templates on the web) which will help in the event of any disagreement.

Supercell

Maybe its the cold water in face that might wake the OP up a little - no offence to the OP but I think you are a little naive thinking currently and while MM isn't being particularly subtle maybe the point has been made ?

NeptunesMoon

So even though MM's response wasn't the most helpful and could get him banned, I wouldn't like to see him banned, no point, I'm not upset or anything:D A slap in the face but as hmmm pointed out, theres a way round it, partnership, which is fine, and there wont be no disagreements like that. were like brothers:cool:

I know what your saying about not doing too much at once, but I wont be, the service business will be the main thing ill be concentrating on cuz that will be bringing in € immediately where as the others will be just a kind of hobby, but ill still hope to make a bit of € off them.

So what about setting up? Do i need to set up an umbrella brand that all these will fall into and just have it "main name trading as venture name" type thing?

how much would an accountant be? wont be a lot of paperwork, at all, but would like to get on the right track!

xha1r

Ok, now I am confused. Was MM's response to me, saying that I shouldn't ask that question as it may be deemed as personal, or as a reply to NM to suggest he is foolish to think he owns half the business when his "partner" registered it?

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

mountainyman banned from the forum for a week, for obvious reasons.

if you ring the companies office or look at their website, they should help you to make this decision. tbh the most important thing is that the business itself is a success.

you could do something like sign an agreement to share revenues, profits etc and then post it to yourselves so it has a verifiable date of agreement. When the business starts to take off you can make the relationship more serious through the companies office.