Small-Time Operator: How to Start Your Own Small Business, Keep Your Books, Pay Your Taxes, and Stay Out of Trouble!

A guide to starting a small business guides readers through each step, from idea development to record keeping, explaining potentially confusing subjects and teaching owners how to to monitor their credit, expenditures, and inventory. Original.

Written for small businesses, self-employed individuals, employers, professionals, independent contractors, home businesses, and Internet businesses, Small Time Operator is the most popular business start-up guide ever. In clear, easy-to-understand language, the author covers getting permits and licenses; how to finance a business; finding the right business location; creating and using a business plan; choosing and protecting a business name; deciding whether to incorporate; establishing a complete bookkeeping system; hiring employees; federal, state, and local taxes; buying a business or franchise; dealing with—and avoiding—the IRS; doing business on the Internet; handling insurance, contracts, pricing, trademarks, patents, and much more.

This new edition features sections on surviving the Global Information Grid—or GIG—economy. There are hundreds of thousands of newly self-employed individuals operating in this new, on-demand economy, but unfortunately the great majority of these workers have zero experience or knowledge about self-employment. This book will provide on-demand workers with everything they need to know to not only survive, but truly thrive in the modern economy.