collecting visa / starting a company?..
 

If I wanted to collect payment in Visa for either goods or services provided what do I need?

this is not to start a huge company but just to collect some odd jobs on the side. the majority of my income still coming from a regular job.

is the process worth it at all to collect a few hundred bucks every now and then? (cash would be so much easier... but one potential client can only pay in visa)


Would I need to start a company with a registered business name, and file bunisness taxes?

or can I just add the income to my personal income?

what is the easiest and cheapest way to accept visa cards?

your question is pretty vague, and from what i can see - it's not much of a plan.

also, please define odd jobs, amount you will expect to charge, and # of customers you expect to have per month.

1 customer... maybe a couple hundred a month.

odd jobs being fixing stuff at his office or selling him products I build.

not worth it imo.

you dont have the volume to justify a merchant account. if you have 100 customers paying couple hundred every mo. then i can see it. moneris needs financial statments before they give you a merchant account, and your bank needs financial statments if u want to open up a business pos account.

here is a simple cost break-down assuming you get $200/mo.

+Sale 200
-bank account fee 75 (includes pos terminal rental , gst, and business account )
- moneries processing fee 10 ( im assuming its 5% - the place i work at we get charged 3.25 % for visa and similar amount for mc, and we are an online ticketing company, and process about 1700-2100 trxns per mo...)
- taxes 36 (assuming you pay 18% tax - correct me if im wrong but thats the lowest tax bracket i think ) - cuz there's a continuous paper trail...
= take home = 79

not really worth it as you can see....


just get your customers to pay you in check or CASH?

there must be an easy way to collect visa? I mean he could just setup a paypal account and pay me using that off his visa for free. but there would be no proper bill / receipt. it would have to be a legit bill from a registered company to submit to the company accountants.


so forgeting the visa part. what else would I need to legally work self employed? I need to register a comany name. (I think about $70). then what? can I start working and billing poeple?

what other fees, costs ect will I face. do I need insurance? in case I'm in an office and screw a bunch of stuff up? or if my company is hired by their company, and I'm on their property, am I covered by theirs?

I assume there are books on starting a company in canada?.... is there simple ones someone would recommand.

In your situation all you need to do to be legal is register a company. the small business name search / registering place is right at waterfront skytrain station. if you plan to work as John Smith - they you dont need to register. however if u plan to work as John the Handy Man then you need to register that name. I believe it costs >$100 to be incorporated. although inc'ing limits your liability, im not sure if its worth it to u at this point, and since ur small, no one(the banks) would care if ur inc'ed- they'd still want a personal gurantee for any credit.

As for payment, all you need to do is purchase a basic accounting software such as quickbooks or simply accounting (simply FTW!!) and it'll help you create professional looking invoices that you can email to your clients. to collect payments you can ask ur clients to pay you via paypal, then they can pay using their visa card. paypal charges you the receiver 3% for service fees ( almost the same as visa/mc fees). then you can transfer the funds to your operating bank account.

as for insurance -i'm not too sure. i just know about the finance side / business registration process.

the waterfront business registraton location has a library for everything you need to know about starting a business in canada. from getting import permits to exporting dangerous goods.

probably not worth incorporating man, too many expenses, probably outweighs the tax benefits

u can make him pay through paypal....but they will take 3.5%
or you can sign up with global payments and do it via a virtual terminal....process the payment online..

you do not need to register a business....
what you are doing is `Self-employment`and you can still deduct expenses as a contractor..

This looks pretty easy... no setup or monthly fees. around 3% per transaction. which you'll pay from a POS system anyways.

https://www.paypal.com/ca/cgi-bin/we...erview-outside

I guess the money sits in the paypal acount until I transfer it out. if I only transfer once a month then a TD pay as you go business account is under $10 a month.

would I even need a business account or could I just transfer money into my personal account? as long as I trip track of everything for tax season.

still need to figure out charging / collecting / paying GST / PST.... only PST on labor I guess. until HST comes in.

looks like I need a municipality licence as well?..

It's better to have a seperate "business" account. You can open up a secondary checking account and call it "business".

As for charing out GST & PST. If you dont see yourself making 30k in 1 year , you dont need a gst#. without a gst # you are not able to charge gst.

since you are a 'service' company your invoice are PST exempt.

dont try to scam your customers by charging gst + pst , and not remitting it to the govt. dont ask why - just dont do

I'm not sure if HST will work the same as GST in the sense that if you dont make the 30k cut off - you dont need to charge HST.

I've never heard of municipality licenses - could you expand? whats the purpose of it?

so if I'm making under 30k of self employed income I don't need to worry about PST or GST? (if I'm only providing labor and not selling anything)


http://www.smallbusinessbc.ca/?q=sta...ments&page=0,2

oh yeah. business licence/number - i kinda assumed it was implied.

correct. if you are making less then 30k/ year in business income you do not need a GST number. again, im not sure about how the HST will impact it.


let me know when you start up ur biz - ill send u my invoice. I take CASH ONLY :)