In Bidness!

Well, Stuff Enterprises, LLC, is off and running, and earning a buck. It's not any time soon on the Forbes 100 list, but I'm paying the rent...so far. I don't know that there is a businessperson anywhere who can truly say he's done it all himself, because when it comes to all the crap involved in setting up a business legally, a businessperson would just give up and hold a cup on a street corner for a daily meal.

My savior has been Chris, the accountant-cum-HR-cum-taxes whiz at my former employer. She has helped me cross the I's and dot the T's and had me sign the forms that the state and Fed need in order to properly get their claws on my earnings.

It was on her advice that I shifted my personal status from independent contractor to employee. Of Stuff Enterprises, LLC. The company I own. So, yes, I am the owner and president of the company. And I am the sole employee of the company! The reason behind this setup is to protect myself from any potential lawsuits that may arise as a result of my operation of the taxi. Should that happen, the company is the legal target, and any damages or seizure of assets is exacted upon the company, and not me, personally. As an independent contractor leasing the taxi from my company, I would still be individually liable in the event of any legal action. So I exercised my Employer Identification Number and became a job creator! Though, admittedly, the hiring process involved an unfair amount of favoritism....

As a tax deadline loomed in October, Chris called me in to finalize and sign some paperwork. And she said to bring my checkbook...which sounded ominous.

I arrived, and she explained a few things, and gave me some forms to sign, among them an IRS form authorizing the service to withdraw a fixed amount monthly as payroll tax, based on a salary that I'm paying myself.

I'M PAYING MYSELF A SALARY!

I asked her if this IRS fixed amount was the amount for which I needed to write the check, and she said that it was not, and that it was going to be withdrawn electronically from my business checking account.

She also advised me to consider changing my company from a Limited Liability Company to an S Corporation — which I did not know I was eligible to do — in an effort to save a little on taxes annually. We're going to wait on that decision until the new year.

Then she presented me with another form, and pointed to the amount on that sheet as the amount I needed to write on the check — an amount which, for this month, anyway, was anything but ominous.

"This form is the Unemployment Insurance form. As an employer, you have to provide this for your employees. As an employer, should you close the doors on Stuff Enterprises and go out of business, as an employee you can collect unemployment."

The spoon in her coffee cup rattled when my chin hit the desk. In the freaky world of entrepreneurial endeavor, I am no longer unemployed. And while I am self-employed, I am no longer self-employed.

My next question for Chris is to wonder if Stuff Enterprises, LLC, can have a summer work slowdown and subsequent layoff for, say, a month or two....

I also want to remove the name "Stuff Enterprises" from the taxi business, as I also operate — in principle, anyway — a video production company. I want Stuff Enterprises to be the parent company of the others, so I need a new name for the taxi operation. My favorite, because it actually sounds like my family name — Gasbarro — is "Casbah Row Transport Company," though I fear it may mislead one to think I'm Algerian.

Of course, I could call it "Casbah Row Airport Passengery," and go by "CRAP" for short.

OR, I could take suggestions. From you. Serious ideas accepted, too!