Your Home Based Business Needs To Stay Legal: Here’s How In 5 Ways

The daydream of making your side hustle your only hustle is one that comes true for many these days; eventually, the side hustle you’ve spent time building can move into being your only hustle, and that hustle often begins at home. Working from home is something that almost everyone wants to achieve in their career; avoiding the commute, working on your own schedule that can move at a pace that you are comfortable with and enjoying time with your family are all exciting prospects. A business in the home can be anything that you want, whether that’s baking, cleaning for others or consulting on a topic that you’re an expert on.

As a home-based business owner, you need to think about how to protect yourself. Not only are you going to be self-employed, and therefore financially vulnerable, you’re going to be relying on knowing the ins and outs of the legal side of working from home. So, how can you ensure that your new business can stay as legal as possible?

A company, no matter how big or small, needs to be insured. This list of insurances can tell you what you need to invest in for your small business, and Leibel Insurance Group can help you to put the right insurances in place. You have to keep yourself protected; especially as you are working from your personal address.

Before you even get started, you need to know that you’re not going to be impinging on other businesses by choosing the same business name. Search for your business name and ensure that the trademark is cleared. You can pay for a deeper search to ensure that you’re not going to step on any toes.

You need to make sure that you get a tax ID if you’re not comfortable with sending out your social security number to vendors and customer. It’s far more professional to have an EIN and the appropriate tax ID, and you can get these from the IRS.

Having a PO box address can mean that you can keep your address protected from clients knowing exactly where you live. Your home should be a place of safety and privacy, which is why a PO box is a good idea to invest in. This way, business and legal notices won’t be delivered to you at home, and instead will be picked up externally.

When you run a food business from your home, you have to have the appropriate licenses and permits, as well as a food safety and hygiene certificate. You may also need to go through the process of a health inspection before you can be signed off to work.

Staying on the right side of legal is so important for your company to be successful. There is plenty of advice out there to ensure that you are going to do things the right way, so don’t cut any corners – get yourself set up the correctly and save yourself a headache.