Advice from Nashville's Financial Guru Dave Ramsey
Dave Says
By Dave Ramsey
Author of Financial Peace and The Total Money Makeover
1/24/2005
I have numerous odd jobs, how do
I do taxes?
Dear Dave,
I’ve been a stay-at-home mom for the past two years. I’m now starting to do a lot of odd jobs where I would be considered an independent contractor or self-employed. However, they are several different types of jobs, rather than one specific kind of business.
This last year, we did our taxes ourselves and the form asked me to list all of our businesses separately. In the future, is it possible for me to collect all of these odd jobs under a single name, such as Ramsey Enterprises, and then just list all of the jobs under that umbrella name?
Also, can you recommend a good book on the subject of owning your own business?
Ann in Nashville, TN
Dear Ann,
Yes. It’s not as if you have seven $50,000 enterprises. You’ve got seven little enterprises that might add up to $50,000. I would just call that something like Ann’s Enterprises.
I would suggest you open up a separate checking account for your enterprise. You can set up the account as a sole-proprietorship just using your social security number. Then run all of your business income under that account. Within your bookkeeping, you could post the revenue from each different job separately for the purpose of tracking the profit and loss of each one. But that would just be for your own sake. Remember to never pay business expenses from your personal account and never direct-deposit business revenues into your personal account. Business is business and should be kept separate.
With regard to the business book, I have not yet found the consummate book on running your own business, but there are a couple that I recommend frequently that cover part of the subject. I always recommend Guerrilla Marketing by J. Conrad Levinson to learn about grass roots marketing. I also recommend The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber which covers the general subject of becoming an entrepreneur.
-Dave
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