Welcome to the effective e-commerce podcast in this episode we’re gonna talk about the legal, the taxes, and the banking side of things and specifically the point hacking side of things. This is I’ll save this part for the end but is my favorite part about starting a new business is giving new credit cards you can use you can use them to get a lot of points I have one credit card for instance where I sign up spend $4000, within three months and you get , 50, 000points now never let credit cards use you a lot of people go into debt with credit cards that’s awful you’re just wasting your money obviously you know that but you can make a lot of money and get a lot of traveling for free by using credit cards properly especially when you’re starting a business because when you start a business you have so many expenses right off the bat you might as well sign up for some different credit cards and get those signup bonuses. So first off let’s start with some of the legal side of things and this is a question I get a lot and I am NOT a tax professional, I am NOT a lawyer, I obviously talked to your lawyer before you start any kind of business but I wanted to give a brief overview of some of the different legal aspects of starting a business specifically should you start it as a DBA an LLC or an SCorp now once again this is not tax advice this is not legal advice but I think a lot of people get hung up on this truth is if you’re not making sales the government’s not going to come after you no matter pretty much where you are so think about like that a lot of people I think enjoy the idea of playing business they enjoy getting the business cards they enjoy you know doing all these different things that aren’t that isn’t selling. Selling is the most important part of starting a business making money that’s why you started a business now if you make $1000, from a business and you don’t have an LLC or an Scorp or even a DBA you know the truth is the government’s probably not going to notice they’re probably not really going to penalize you hard once again don’t do this cuz I’m sure there’s one person that has done this or will do this and will get penalized but I’m just putting that in context. The government’s not making their money off people that make a thousand bucks on the side and any could still report that if you do it but anyways let’s get back to on topic here so the easiest and when I recommend doing for most people is just start your business as a DBA that’s doing business as. You can do it for cheaper but the way I usually do it is  bucks I use LegalZoom you I also use Legal Zoom to file my LLC paperwork as well so when you’re first starting out just do it it’s DBA now the one caveat is if it’s something ingestible if it’s something where you have a chance of being sued then you want to do an LLC and an LLC is a limited liability company what that does is it creates a separate entity doing business as would be you your it’s just Travis Marziani doing business as effective e-commerce now an LLC for instance is a whole nother corporate it’s a corporation it’s a different entity if someone wants to sue so for instance Performance Nut Butter is an LLC because if someone wants to sue Performance Nut Butter they can sue that company they’re not gonna sue me and the reason I did that is there’s always a chance and I don’t think you know I’m doing everything I can to avoid it but there’s always a chance that someone gets food poisoning or there’s some issue like that and people are gonna want to sue me and I don’t want them being able to take all my assets I’d rather them just you know they could put Performance Nut Butter out of business with which office obviously would stink but it wouldn’t be as bad as them being able to come after me so that’s why you have the protection of an LLC now there’s also an S Corp which is I believe just stands for small corporation as compared to a C Corp so pretty much nobody listening to this would want to do a C Corp. C Corp are companies like Apple giant corporations that have a lot of stock all that different stuff but an S Corp is for small businesses and it has some tax benefits. There is some extra rules as far as how you file your taxes there is some extra like regulations there but there’s some tax benefits and the way it works is any of the profit so any profit that’s left over at the end of the year you can do as capital gains I believe, which means you pay a lower tax rate on that that being said my favorite way and from what I can tell and maybe someone listening can correct me but I think the best way to do it is form an LLC but then be taxed as an S corp so you have the advantages of the easiness of creating an LLC but then ultimately you have the tax benefits of an S corp so it’s kind of the both the best of both worlds because an S corporation has like I said some issues you have to do you have to do meeting minutes I believe and when you file your taxes you have to basically you have to prove that you’re a real business with an LLC it’s much easier to run an LLC so that’s the benefit of an S corp so let’s talk about some of the other stuff obviously taxes there is state taxes and federal taxes most people when you’re starting out you’re just gonna have to file sales tax once a year that’s kind of complicated I’m definitely on an expert on that but as far as I have been told if you are based in California and you sell a product to somebody else in California you need to collect state sales tax if you’re based in California and you make a sale to somebody in New York for instance you don’t need to collect state sales tax now those rules are still kind of changing and it does throw a wrench in things if you do Amazon. Amazon FBA if you’re doing Amazon FBA and you have a warehouse or you’re you send your supplies to the Amazon warehouse in New York and they make a sale to somebody in New York right now the current thinking is that you need to collect state sales tax and you need to give it to New York I think that’s I think that’s wrong legally I think that’s not how it should be but nobody’s really fought it because right now there’s some old business models and we can talk about this in a separate episode but but realistically you don’t have an entity in you don’t have a presence in New York though right now the law is kind of gray and they say you do have a presence in New York because you sent that item into a fulfillment center in New York anyways I’m not an expert on that so we’re gonna avoid that topic for now state and federal taxes are fairly simple to file I mean you may want to just hire someone especially if you’re doing it as a DBA in the early days well if you’re doing it as a DBA they’re especially easy to follow you might able to do it on your own I mean I’m not an expert on this definitely just google this and you can find out a lot more information but write-offs start thinking about everything you can right for your business and I am a huge believer of be smart about it I mean figure out what are you using for business and really include everything because there’s a lot of stuff you probably do for business that should be a write-off once again I’m not a lawyer I’m not a tax professional not your CPA talk to somebody and see what you can do for an instance one of the things is if you’re doing traveling and you can somehow tie it to your business that can be a write-off I’ve been told stories of people that go to the sell fashion items and they’ll go to Greece for quote unquote inspiration for their new fashion items even though that’s not really why they’re going or I have friends that do have a YouTube component to their online store or their marketing efforts and they’ll just film a video while they’re abroad and say oh I went there for business be smart figure out everything you can write off realistically I’m of the opinion when you’re starting a business the government kind of screws you I you know I don’t want to be too harsh about this but it’s true like they do so many things there’s so many regulations that are out to kill small businesses right now for despite being in America which is supposed to be very small business friendly there’s still so many issues and so many things that they do to really just put the clamp on small businesses I think it’s your right to try to pay as little tax as possible in fact it’s 100% your right even tax everyone would tell you that so really be smart about it and really try to tie visit it try to get as many businesses as expenses as possible so let’s see what else we got here so anyways I want to kind of close that off let’s talk about the next step so you need to and you % should get a business bank account and a credit card a separate credit card just for your business as soon as possible it’s gonna make accounting bookkeeping so much easier so the way I did it is if you just get a DBA just take your DBA paperwork’s I personally use US bank I’ve heard Bank of America is pretty good too I believe but I use US banks just because they have a free business level just tape take your DBA paperwork in there take a driver’s license go to your US bank and they’ll help you out I mean their job is to make it as easy as possible for you to open up a bank account so then you have that separate bank account step is getting a separate credit card because you’re gonna be using credit cards a lot and this is what I teased about at the beginning of the episode this is my favorite part about starting a new business is you get to get a bunch of new brand new credit cards now never go into debt over a business you’re starting that is just so silly and I’m sure most people listening to this already know that but what you can do is do some point hacking and I haven’t I don’t pay for travel anymore I get free travel pretty much everywhere I go I get free flights I get free hotel stays and it’s all because I spend a lot of money on credit cards I get those points and then I do you know point hacking mile hacking all that different stuff specifically the way to do it is when you first sign up the signup bonuses for credit cards are huge I the one credit card I talked about it was , points that are worth that’s worth six hundred twenty-five dollars and travel so think about that I got a new credit card spent four thousand dollars which I would have done anyways and I got $ towards travel actually probably even more than that because you accumulate points on that four thousand dollars you spend as well and then I got I can get a new credit card after that and there is a bunch right now for all the credit cards that I have you go to effective ecommerce comm slash current cards or yeah let’s do effective e-commerce comm slash current cards I’ll put a list of all what I think are the top business cards just to give you a quick rundown and the Chase Sapphire is good for personal spend the chase ink bold which does have a ninety five dollar a year spend is really a ninety five dollar a year fee but you get eighty thousand points with that one which is worth over a thousand dollars in travel I believe you have to spend four or five thousand dollars within the first three months which is pretty easy to do when you’re starting a business not gonna lie there that those two and then there is the Amex gold you can if you go to my effective e-commerce comm slash current cards there is a link for a , point offer but you know it’s up to you I probably wouldn’t take that I’d probably wait to see if you get lucky and get an offer in the mail sometimes they’ll send out , point gold MX gold cards you can get that card and you get , points which you can transfer two different airlines those , points and for instance if you use them smartly you can actually get a round-trip ticket to Buenos Aires for instance usually a $, flight for , points same thing for Europe I got a flight to Australia for , points usually to Europe it’s gonna be about  thousand miles but you can sometimes get it for a little bit cheaper than that so if you go to effective e-commerce comm slash current cards you will see all the cards that I’m currently using and I have offers and if you use one of my linked offers I will give you a free one-on-one consulting session because I do get they give me like a miles bonus for referring people but these are the credit cards I’m actually using and like I said most of the credit cards that I have links there to you should use those offers they’re great offers the , Point Chase Sapphire rewards card and the , chase ink bold are to my top ones but for the Amex gold you get , points which is really good and it’s still a great offer but sometimes you’ll get lucky and only get  thousand points so you may not want to use my link for that unless you’re really itching for some free points there’s two other credit cards on there as well I think in American Airlines credit card that was , miles which is really good that’s at least two round-trip tickets anywhere in the US maybe maybe even two international round-trip tickets if you use it smartly and yeah that’s that’s basically all I want to say in this episode is figure out when you’re starting a business figure out how you can make the business work for you as much as possible in point hacking is a great way to do it so just as a recap if you’re starting a business and it’s there’s not a very likely it’s not likely that you will get sued you can go ahead and start it as a DBA if there is a chance that you might get sued do it as an LLC and get taxed as an S corp and lastly sales tax all that kind of stuff obviously find someone to do bookkeeping for you or do it yourself it’s not that hard to learn but really pay attention and try to write off as much as possible this is your chance to kind of kind of get back at the government they don’t make it easy to start an online business and this is kind of your way of saving some of that money that they’re charging you for ridiculous things I mean they charge you all the time we recently just had a thousand dollar extra tax we had to pay a thousand dollar tax why not because we did anything wrong but the California state government overspent their budget and they needed to make money somehow so they decided to pass it along to us which I thought it was total BS because that you know we didn’t do anything wrong but that’s just how it goes so anyways that’s pretty much all I want to talk about in this episode good effective e-commerce comm slash current cards to see all the credit cards that I’m using and make sure if you haven’t yet go to iTunes and you know what I’m gonna do it live right on this podcast I’m gonna find a new person to that to win the the free one-on-one consulting giveaway so I’m going over to iTunes and if you haven’t yet go to iTunes search effective ecommerce find my podcast leave a five star review and I will give you a free well I’ll enter you in a raffle to win a free one-on-one consulting session but I pick a new person every month so the earlier you get in your review the more likely you are to win so let’s go over there and you know what I’m gonna do today I’m gonna scroll down pick one at random and let’s go Mike the manager let’s see he said I’ve listened to Travis for over a year on his previous show and learned so much great info very honest advice and advice on the new project and look forward to listening thanks Mike the manager send me an email Travis at effective e-commerce comm and I will give you a free one-on-one consulting session I’ll be picking more people every week last week someone I believe it was Murphy boys studios you want a freak one-on-one consulting session as well so feel free to email me Travis at effectiveecommerce.com to claim that and for everybody listening go to iTunes I’ll leave that five-star review and I would hugely appreciate it because when you leave that five-star review not only does it let me know that you like the show it helps new people listen to the show it helps new people be able to find the show in iTunes and in the long run I plan on getting guests I plan on getting really interesting highly educated highly knowledgeable guests and if they see I only have fifteen five-star review like I do currently they may not come on so I want to get that number at least  if I can get that number  five-star reviews I can probably get some really high caliber marketing geniuses so iTunes Effective Ecommerce leave that five-star review and thank you so much for listening to this podcast have a great restaurant.

Legal
DBA
LLC
S Corp

Taxes
Get an EIN
Fairly simple to file
State vs Federal
Sales Tax only usually pay in state
Amazon out of state depends in FBA
-Kind of BS

Point Hacking
Explain
ALL FREE TRIPS
My current credit cards
Go to /current cards