vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
It's quite common for VAT-registered businesses to quote ex-VAT prices for supply to other businesses.  However you're right that when you make an order you will be invoiced and ultimately have to pay the VAT-inclusive price, assuming your supplier is VAT registered.  If you're not clear on this then you should check since it obviously makes quite a difference. Since your business is not VAT-registered you cannot charge VAT to your customers.
"You can interpret prices in any way you wish, but the commonly quoted ""price"" is the last price traded. If your broker routes those orders, unlikely because they will be considered ""unfair"" and will probably be busted by the exchange, the only way to drive the price to the heights & lows in your example is to have an overwhelming amount of quantity relative to the order book. Your orders will hit the opposing limit orders until your quantity is exhausted, starting from the best price to the worst price. This is the functional equivalent to a market order."
Businesses underprice -- sometimes severely -- to gain market share all the time. When I started my company 14 years ago we were charging peanuts and losing money on every deal, all we cared about was building a customer base and we figured we would properly monetize later. We lost money in the short run, but the strategy worked.
"Let's say you see a café. You're looking to buy a café so you walk into one and ask the manager how much profit he makes in a year. He says $N and you walk out and think to yourself, ""I'd be willing to pay $500,000 for this café."" You arrange to meet again to discuss purchasing the business (and he's looking for someone to purchase it).  You go into the store again the following day and the manager says, ""Sorry, I told you we make $N. I've checked the numbers and it's actually only $0.8N (20% lower than what you thought)."" Are you still willing to buy the café for $500,000 as well? No, of course you're not.  I think that this is a sufficient analogy to public companies."
You won't be able to avoid the $800 fee. CA FTB has a very specific example, which is identical to your situation (except that they use NV instead of AZ), to show that the LLC has liability in California. State of formation is of no matter, you'll just be liable for fees in that state in addition to the CA fees. This is in fact a very common situation (that's why they have this as an example to begin with). See CA FTB 568 booklet. The example is on page 14. I suggest forming the LLC in AZ/CA and registering it as a foreign entity in the other state (AZ if formed in CA, the better option IMHO, or CA if formed in AZ). You'll have tax liability in both the states, AZ taxes can be credited towards the CA taxes. Instead of forming LLC, you can cover your potential liability with sufficient insurance coverage.
I have a very similar situation doing side IT projects.  I set up an LLC for the business, created a separate bank account, and track things separately.  I then pay myself from the LLC bank account based on my hours for the consulting job.  (I keep a percentage in the LLC account to pay for expenses.)  I used to do my taxes myself, but when I created this arrangement, I started having an accountant do them.  An LLC will not affect your tax status, but it will protect you from liability and make things more accountable come tax time.
Making a game is hard enough, focus on that. If/when you start getting close to having something to sell, then if you're serious and want the company to grow into a full time venture, briefly consult with a lawyer and possibly accountant to set this up. It will save you a lot of time researching what you have to do and a lot of headache from potentially doing things wrong. If you want to try to do it on your own, I'd recommend getting a book on starting a business because there is more to know than a single post can cover. You'll probably have to file for a DBA (doing business as) at your city hall in order to be allowed to refer to yourself as the name of your company (otherwise you have to use your personal name). Initiating that will likely initiate annual business taxes in your town in addition to the cheap filing fee. You also want to consider how you will handle trademark (of your business and game) and copyright (of your game). If this is going to grow, you'll have to have contracts written for either employees or for freelancers who might produce assets for you. You may also need to consider writing an EULA for your game, privacy policies, etc. Additionally, you'll likely have to file with your state to collect and send sales tax. You'll also want to meticulously track costs and revenue related to your business. Formally starting a business will likely open you up to property, sales and income tax. For example, where I am, was even taxed on the equipment the business uses (e.g. computers). This is why it makes sense to wait until you're closer to having a product before you try to formally start a business and to consult with professionals on the best way. The type of business you should form will depend on the scope you plan for the company and the amount of time/money you're willing to put in. A sole proprietorship (what you are by default) means there is no difference legally/financially between you as an individual and you as a company. This may be suitable if this is just a hobby, but not if you intend it to grow because that means any lawsuit directed at your company and its money is also directed at you and your money.
IANAL (and nor am I an accountant), so I can't give a definitive answer as to legality, but AFAIK, what you propose is legal. But what's the benefit? Avoiding corporation tax? It's simplistic – and costly – to think in terms like that. You need to run the numbers for different scenarios, and make a plan. You can end up ahead of the game precisely by choosing to pay some corporate tax each year. Really! Read on. One of the many reasons that self-employed Canadians sometimes opt for a corporate structure over being a sole proprietor is to be able to not pay themselves everything the company earns each year. This is especially important when a business has some really good years, and others, meh. Using the corporation to retain earnings can be more tax effective. Example: Imagine your corporation earns, net of accounting & other non-tax costs except for your draws, $120,000/year for 5 years, and $0 in year 6. Assume the business is your only source of income for those 6 years. Would you rather: Pay yourself the entire $120,000/yr in years 1-5, then $0 in year 6 (living off personal savings you hopefully accumulated earlier), subjecting the $120,000/yr to personal income tax only, leaving nothing in the corporation to be taxed? Very roughly speaking, assuming tax rates & brackets are level from year to year, and using this calculator (which simplifies certain things), then in Ontario, then you'd net ~$84,878/yr for years 1-5, and $0 in year 6. Overall, you realized $424,390. Drawing the income in this manner, the average tax rate on the $600,000 was 29.26%. vs. Pay yourself only $100,000/yr in years 1-5, leaving $20,000/yr subject to corporation tax. Assuming a 15.5% combined federal/provincial corporate tax rate (includes the small business deduction), then the corp. is left with $16,900/yr to add to retained earnings in years 1-5. In year 6, the corp.
Wow. Few initial thoughts:  1) Amazon is not going to keep WFM's pricing structure in place. I expect we'll see some serious pricing pressure on the whole space. The food companies have already been feeling the squeeze (remember all those headlines about Wal-Mart pressuring their CPG vendors to trim prices 15%?) and this is only going to make it harder for them.   2) Amazon has been building out its distribution network through fulfillment centers. This gives them a huge footprint for both click-and-collect and direct-to-consumer online grocery delivery. Also probably helps consumer perceptions about the quality of buying food online.  3) I think if you're a company like TGT you need to step back and look at your strategy in food. Might be a good time to admit defeat or at least scale back.  4) Amazon could very well go the private label route here. Especially with pressure from Aldi and Lidl, there might be a real opportunity for it at WFM. Perhaps a name like THS could get a boost.  5) I'd sure love to be at Jana right now
"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.
"Comission is a must when doing sales. That is the best (and only good) incentive to sell more. How much you want to give all depends on margins, the salary level that is accepted in your state/country and what sellers you have (young or old).  Salary costs at 30 - 35% of total order value is normal including salary tax and all tax oriented costs around that employee.   There are 2 ways of doing it. Only high commission and fixed salary + lower commission. Even if you use fixed salary + commission you can have ""restrictions"" so they have to sell above a certain level to get that commission. That means that you don't take any risks.   An example of a salary model that I found was popular. (The numbers are just made up according to what is normal to have in Sweden). It's a step-model. If you sell for:  Step 1: 0 - $3000 you get high commission 20% of everything you sell  Step 2: $3000 - $4000 you get fixed salary of $1000 + 10% commission  Step 3: $4000 - $6000 you get fixed salary of $1700 + 15% commission  And so on.  Your weakest points are when going to a higher step. You have to change the steps so it works with your salary statistics so you have most people under a step to motivate them to go to the next instead of having them exactly above one step. As you can see, with a step model, you just put a disquise on the commission model but make it more attractive. What the seller think is that they have a fixed salary. If a seller is happy, he/she is selling a lot.    I have also had a criteria saying that if you can keep youself at 1 step for more than 3 months you will start there each month. Then it's up to the team leader to warn if that seller IS good or just LUCKY."
If it's a small one person business he will have to sign a personal guarantee no matter what he does with respect to incorporating. Not saying your idea isn't worth looking into but no bank will lend him money without a personal guarantee.
If you are providing VAT-liable services (you probablly are) and you register normally for VAT then you will be able to reclaim VAT on your buisness purchases but you will have to charge VAT to your clients. So the question really comes down to will your clients regard you adding VAT to their invoices as a price increase or not. That is likely to depend on whether your clients are in a position to claim-back the VAT you charged them. If you are working mostly for VAT registered buisnesses who perform primerally vat-liable (including zero-rated) activities then registering for VAT is likely in your financial interests (though it does mean more paperwork). The flat-rate scheme may be better still. If you are working mostly for private individuals, non VAT registered buisnesses or buisnesses which primerally perform VAT exempt* activities then registering for VAT when you don't have to is most likely not in your financial interests. * Note: VAT exempt and zero rated for VAT are very different things even though they look similar to the customer.
Whether you're working on a house or a business, it is likely not *your* house or business, so remember that you a guest. Be courteous, not familial but professional, protect their property by not tracking mud or leaving pipe dope smears on the doors. Look for ways to build your bottom line and help your client at the same time. If you've got to hack up a front yard, offer to include grading and reseeding in your price. It makes the job feel finished, and often it is something that the client doesn't want to be involved in anyway. You don't know anything about grading or seeding? Hook up with a trusted local landscaper that can do it for you, but cover it in your price to keep the client with a single source. Best of luck. Plumbing is not an easy job. It takes a tough person to want to handle other people's sewage.
$600 is a good deal. If buddy can't pay $600 for IT, he doesn't have enough money to run a business and make it successful. That's one of the main reasons new companies fail, not enough capital to run the business for one year without revenue.
It's good advice that I use on occasion. It typically only works for small businesses though. You need to keep in mind that everytime you swipe your card that business pays 1.5-3% processing fee to Visa/MasterCard and probably won't see your money in their account for at least a month. Also since cash has less of a paper trail many businesses don't accurately report it come tax time (ie. they subsequently pay less taxes).
"Just as with any other service provider - vote with your wallet. Do not go back to that doctor's office, and make sure they know why. It's unheard of that a service provider will not disclose the anticipated charges ahead of time. A service provider saying ""we won't tell you how much we charge"" is a huge red flag, and you shouldn't have been dealing with them to begin with. Now you know. how can we ever get health care costs under control if there's so   little transparency? I'm assuming you're in the US. This is not going to change, since there's no profit in not screwing the customers. As long as health-care is a for-profit industry, you should expect everyone in it being busy figuring out a way for money to move from your wallet to their. That's what capitalism is about."
Depends on what you're selling and to whom?    If you want attention you need to win over the gatekeeper.  I remember a colleague who would always drop off nice chocolates (in person) to the receptionists and support staff on a regular basis for clients they were interested in (they sold financial products to the C-suite).   It worked wonders on getting in person meetings with the decision makers.  It also helped that the colleague was genuine and pleasant to deal with.
"This might not be the answer you are looking for, but the alternative to ""don't patronize these merchants"" is this: DO patronize these merchants, and pay cash.   Credit cards are convenient.  (I use a credit card often.)  However, there is no denying that they cost the merchants an incredible amount in fees, and that our entire economy is paying for these fees.  The price of everything is more than it needs to be because of these fees.  Yes, you get some money back with your rewards card, but the money you get back comes directly from the store you made the purchase with, and the reward is paid for by increasing the price of everything you buy.  In addition, those among us that do not have the credit score necessary to obtain a rewards card are paying the same higher price for goods as the rest of us, but don't get the cash back reward. Honestly, it seems quite fair to me that only the people charging purchases to a credit card should have to pay the extra fee that goes along with that payment processing.  If a store chooses to do that, I pay cash instead, and I am grateful for the discount."
Right, in that case disregard most of what I've said that's specific, especially on the law bits. Check with someone local (or check the court websites) if small claims court is an option, and if you get a judgement what options there are to collect. A collection agency can also take the legwork out of that, mostly at the customer expense. And selling off debt is still an option, the US industry for that is even bigger than in the Netherlands. And your loss on that is most likely tax deductible, so ask yourself how much your time and aggro is worth.
Some businesses sell a franchise. You will be buying the name and reputation, access to the corporate infrastructure, requirements to use specific supplies and procedures. These tend to come with financing from the parent company. You will need to bring cash to the table, but they will loan you the rest. When purchasing a business, like buying a house, what is part of the deal can be negotiated. Sometimes the new owner and the seller agree to transfer everything. In other cases almost nothing except one item is included. The one item could be the location, the name, the inventory, the customer/client list. All these can be assets or liabilities depending on the specific situation, and which side of the table you are on. In the United states the US government has the Small Business Administration. They also have Small Business Development Centers SMDC to help. These are also supported by state governments and colleges and universities. They can help identify the steps needed to start a small business.
I think business 101 would disagree with you.  A business in business to make a profit.  Otherwise the business will not last. If you are talking about the amount of profit one makes, you might have a point. That being said, that doesn't give one the right to steal the product without compensating the owner.
Power Options is one such example of what you seek, not cheap, but one good trade will recover a year's fee.  There's a lot you can do with the stock price alone as most options pricing will follow Black Scholes.  Keep in mind, this is a niche, these questions, while interesting to me, generate little response here.
Book keeping as a sole proprietor will seem like a headache.  Basically you have to have two accounts for everything and track specifics for any company assets that are mixed use (such as mileages).  No real downsides aside from that.   We just bought a start up kit and then modified it an then did a lot of research on proper registrations.  I found out later you can have a legal expert do it for like 250-300.  If we had known that it would have been worth it.  The state and fed registration is a boring headache. Your time is better spent earning.
If you were a business, all your assets would have a dollar value, so when you sold them you'd decrease the amount of assets by that amount and increase in cash, and if there was a profit on the sale it would go in as income, if there was loss it would count as a cost (or a loss)... so if there was a profit it would increase Equity, a loss then it would decrease Equity.  Since it's not really worthwhile doing a estimated cost for everything that you have, I'd just report it as income like you are doing and let the amount of equity increase proportionately. So, implicitly you always had roughly that amount of equity, but some of it was in the form of assets, and now you're liquidating those assets so the amount shows up in GnuCash. When you buy new things you might sell later, you could consider adding them as assets to keep track of this explicitly (but even then you have problems-- the price of things changes with time and you might not want to keep up with those price changes, it's a lot of extra work for a family budget) -- for stuff you already have it's better to treat things as you are doing and just treat the money as income-- it's easier and doesn't really change anything-- you always had that in equity, some of it was just off the books and now you are bringing it into the books.
The tax man gets mad if you short him on payroll taxes. S corporations are complicated, if you go that route definitely seek help from an accountant. Bookkeeping If you're not willing to pay a full time accountant you'll need to do a lot of studying about how this works. Generally, even if you have a sole proprietorship it's best to have a separate bank account for all of your business transactions. Every source/drain of money will fall into one of 3 categories... Assets - What your business owns: Assets can be categorized by liquidity. Meaning how fast you can transform them directly into cash. Just because a company is worth a lot doesn't necessarily mean it has a lot of cash. Some assets depreciate (lose value over time) whereas some are very hard to transform back into cash based on the value and/or market fluctuations (like property). Liabilities - What you owe others and what others owe you: Everything you owe and everything that is owed to you gets tracked. Just like credit cards, it's completely possible to owe more than you own as long as you can pay the interest to maintain the loans. Equity - the net worth of the company: The approach they commonly teach in schools is called double-entry bookkeeping where they use the equation: In practice I prefer the following because it makes more sense: Basically, if you account for everything correctly both sides of the equation should match up. If you choose to go the sole proprietorship route, it's smart to track everything I've mentioned above but you can choose to keep things simple by just looking at your Equity. Equity, the heart of your business... Basically, every transaction you make having to do with your business can be simplified down to debits (money/value) increasing and credits (money/value) decreasing. For a very simple company you can assess this by looking at net profits. Which can be calculated with: Revenues, are made up of money earned by services performed and goods sold. Expenses are made up of operating costs, materials, payroll, consumables, interest on liabilities, etc. Basically, if you brought in 250K but it cost you 100K to make that happen, you've made 150K for the year in profit.