First commercial project, do i need license and insurance?

[Brian Hale]

The pool hall i frequent is expanding with more tables and a pro shop. The owner asked if I'd be interested in making a free standing counter, small work bench and display cabinet. Do I need to be licensed and insured? I'm in Maryland.

Thanks!
Brian :)

[Dan Hintz]

Unless you're making something structural or occupancy related, I don't believe licensing is required.

[Justin Ludwig]

Double check with your state's licensing laws. I know Arkansas would require a license, but we are the 5th most stringent/ridiculous for licenses. A little Google work and you can find out quite a bit.

[Jim Koepke]

My situation is different. My wife and I sell at the local farmers market. The state of Washington has a sales tax and requires everyone at the farmers market to have a business license and to collect/pay sales tax on all taxable items. We are advised to have insurance. Due to the nature of people wanting to hire a lawyer, we have business insurance just in case.

If some fool falls down against your display cabinet, it doesn't matter how alcohol impaired they may be, there will be some lawyer who might add your name to a list just because they can.

Just my 323492.

323493

jtk

[Frederick Skelly]

There was an article a few months back about a guy who's garage burned down, destroying all his tools and machines. He said the insurance adjuster asked if he'd ever sold any work. The guy said no. The adjuster explained that if he had sold any work, the tools would not have been covered by homeowners. He'd have needed a special business policy.

I'm repeating what I read in a periodical and can't explain the 'whys' here. But it might be a good idea to ask your insurance agent whether such a thing could happen with YOUR policy. Just to know.

Fred

[Jamie Buxton]

Here, you can make furniture and sell it without having a contractors license. But if you work inside somebody's home or office -- say installing those cabinets -- you need a license if the work is more than $500. Of course, if you're selling furniture, you have to collect sales tax, and you have to pay tax on your income.

[Kent Adams]

There was an article a few months back about a guy who's garage burned down, destroying all his tools and machines. He said the insurance adjuster asked if he'd ever sold any work. The guy said no. The adjuster explained that if he had sold any work, the tools would not have been covered by homeowners. He'd have needed a special business policy.

I'm repeating what I read in a periodical and can't explain the 'whys' here. But it might be a good idea to ask your insurance agent whether such a thing could happen with YOUR policy. Just to know.

Fred

Excellent tip there.

[Brian Hale]

Thank you very much for your input!!

We were at the pool hall again last night and talked with the guy for awhile and he's not interested in a cash only arrangement, he'll be making this a business expense and i'll need to be a legitimate business. Well I'm not ready to go that route yet so he'll find local cabinet maker and get bids. Depending on the cost he may be open to me making some items that he'll pick up and install himself. We'll see

Thanks!
Brian :)

[Dan Hintz]

Thank you very much for your input!!

We were at the pool hall again last night and talked with the guy for awhile and he's not interested in a cash only arrangement, he'll be making this a business expense and i'll need to be a legitimate business.

Woh woh woh... nothing was said in the OP about you not having a business license. For the level of money you're talking about, a business license is necessary, and from the sounds of it you were trying to sneak under the table with cash.

[Brian Hale]

Sorry Dan, I thought I was clear asking if I needed a license and insurance for commercial work.

Please forgive if that didn't come across.......

[Dan Hintz]

Sorry Dan, I thought I was clear asking if I needed a license and insurance for commercial work.

Please forgive if that didn't come across.......

Yeah, I'm always thinking a license, as in a P.E., for commercial work... that goes back to my structural comment. Just as much my fault. No worries.

[Len Mullin]

Yes, you should have insurance, especially if it pertains to anything that might be used by the public. If you build it, you are responsible for it. And if anyone is injured by it in any way, you could be the one listed on the lawsuit. For all that the business insurance would cost you, is nothing compared to what it cold cost you to not have it. Plus, it's a tax right-off with other benefits. I'm a firm believer in having insurance, it's covered my backside more then once.
Len

[Ian Moone]

In the land of the blind, the one eyed man (And Charlie Ash) is king.
Grab the check made out to C.Ash with both hands and run!.
OMMV.
Life was made to live dangerously! :D

[Dan Hintz]

In the land of the blind, the one eyed man (And Charlie Ash) is king.
Grab the check made out to C.Ash with both hands and run!.
OMMV.
Life was made to live dangerously! :D

And if someone decides to turn him in (such as an unhappy client), he'll find himself the target of an IRS audit (followed by more bad things). No, if you want to run a business, then run a business, which means basic business licensing.

[Rich Engelhardt]

No, if you want to run a business, then run a business, which means basic business licensing.Or just passing on the idea altogether (which is what I did after gathering all the figures for insurance and licencing)...

When I retired four years ago, I wanted to start up a real - and I mean real small - "Honey Do" sort of handyman service. Just something to keep busy and make a hundred bucks or so a month I could blow on day trips or something.

I checked with my insurance guy & the cost of business insurance would run me about $2400 a year for (IIRC) $3 million in liability coverage.
Then there was the state (really EPA) requirements to be lead and asbestos certified...& the only place to take the classes is in Columbus, so toss in motel fees, gas and meals..

Then - the self employment tax...according to the accountant...


I quit counting when the fees added up to over $5,000.

[Jerome Stanek]

And if someone decides to turn him in (such as an unhappy client), he'll find himself the target of an IRS audit (followed by more bad things). No, if you want to run a business, then run a business, which means basic business licensing.

Only if you don't claim it. You can claim it on your tax forms without being a contractor

[Rich Engelhardt]

But - at some point the self employment tax kicks in & you have a whole new ballgame.
(Net earnings of $400 or more - - what constitutes "net" is up to individual creativity of what comes out of "gross")

Once you pass the $400 point, it behooves a person to begin spending a good amount of money so they can make money. That is if making a small profit is part of the reason a person is selling what they make.
If you're just doing it to break even or as a charity, it may be different...

[Ian Moone]

A "simile" if I may!

Guy I know is blind in one eye and can't see squat outta the other... was a policeman in Zimbabwe & a grenade came thru the window of his police hut... he survived the blast and shrapnel but the blast detached a retina & the other eye wasn't much good thereafter.

So when down in oz= for the quiet life, he took up gold prospecting with a metal detector while living rent free in a tin hut on a gold lease as "the caretaker" so no one could "jump the claim". Any way he qualified for welfare check each month... which was all well n good it covered a little fuel and food..and any small nuggets he found off the lease he could keep, and they helped pay for "the little luxuries"...when he sold them on Evilbay!

Until the tax office intervened...

They wanted to reduce his welfare check by the value of what he sold in Gold!.

So he went to his tax agent/ accountant... who then determined that "if he was liable for tax" on the small amount of gold he sold - THEN he could legally claim all his expenses as deductions!.

So the accountant re jigged his last 3 years of "tax expenses/deductions" for his metal detectors and food fuel car maintenance etc etc - everything he had to utilize to make his living finding gold.

Turned out the Tax office owed him $30K a year for 3 years "tax refund" & had to send him a check for ~$90K!.

He was laughing....bought a new landcruiser etc and upgraded his metal detector! The Old cruiser was pretty beat up coz being basically blind (legally blind for tax purposes) his old 4x4 land cruiser vehicle was pretty beat up coz he drove around the gold lease "by feel" (when he ran into something)!. Same with his metal detecting, walked around the lease blind just waving the detector wherever his mind took him!.

The tax audit was the best thing ever happened to him...

It's not always as bad as it seems, there was heaps of things he had never claimed, that are available to the legally blind - that his tax accountant went right into. Oh did i mention his lady friend "partner" also qualified for a full time careers allowance and she got some $40K in unclaimed arrears for a full time carer? (She would sort out his nuggets when he found them from all the dirt, coz he couldn't see them!

They said for them the tax audit was the equivalent of wining a $100K lottery - best thing ever happened!

Would never happened if they didn't get caught selling a few nuggets they found as a hobby on Evil bay by the tax office.

They are much looking forward to their next tax audit.:D

[Jim Andrew]

I ran a contracting business for 25 years, and never got sued once. When the city decided to license contractors, I passed. Did buy liability insurance every year, in those days it was 300 per year. Bought workers comp when I had help, found the help made more than I did, and quit hiring. Mainly because help thought I was hiring them to watch me work!

[John A langley]

Jim Boy is that the truth

[Ian Moone]

Found a recent pic of old Mort as it happens.

https://scontent.fper2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/v/t1.0-9/12115728_1020587251314127_8610598767445143506_n.jp g?oh=38b31580732002cb7e2b8008a3c79e8d&oe=56907554


Local Chris Morten has trained his own guide dog. He has done such a wonderful job that Tandy (bred by our very own Ann Williams) was the first Guide Dog to graduate Assistance Dog Association training at the age of less than 12 months! Congratulations to Chris and the beautiful Tandy on their achievement. Please remember when you encounter Tandy in the street that if she is wearing her harness, she is at work, so please refrain from giving her a cuddle.

Mort had to get the guide dog, coz his lady friend partner / carer died recently!
Sad thing is, the Lil pup has some difficulty still, reaching the brake & accelerator pedals on the new Land Cruiser!. ;)

Interesting guy - has led "an interesting life" doing many jobs & is a published author!

http://www.rhodesia.com/docs/morten.html



"The Benefactor's Monkey" by CHRISTOPHER MORTEN "The Benefactor's Monkey" is Chris Morten's first novel, but the author is no stranger to the role of word-smith. He became a journalist in 1968, and has worked in Fleet Street, Africa and Australia for an impressive array of major news organisations.

He has spent half his 51 years in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). After leaving school in the early 1960's he worked as a farmer, tobacco buyer, and district Patrol Officer, before joining the Bulawayo Chronicle as a reporter. He went overseas in 1969.

Morten was working for United Press in London before returning to Rhodesia in 1975 as a freelance war and political correspondent. He roamed the war zone, firtsly in his mine-protected 4WD and later in his own plane. His first-hand reports of life in the op-area reached millions of people around the world until 1978, when he returned to farming for a year.

It was while serving with the Sipolilo PATU that Morten was present when a Police medic described the new epidemic which terrorists were reportedly spreading in the Zambezi Valley. Sexually spread and incurable, it was a "one way ticket to hell!" according to the medic, who warned the farmers to caution labour forces with ties in the Valley.

The warning was never reported by Morten, who left his newshound's hat in storage while on ops with PATU. When peace talks reached fruition in London, Morten was asked to cover the cease-fire and independence celebrations for BBC-TV. He left Zimbabwe several weeks after independence, after a gentle warning from the incoming administration. Fascinated by Australia's Outback, he migrated and set up a Channel Nine news bureau in Broome. He filmed and wrote hundreds of news and current affairs stories in a "beat" covering a quarter of the continent.

In 1988 Morten and partner Lyn Joy moved to Queensland's Sunshine Coast. They share their rain forest home with a wide variety of wildlife. It was here Chris Morten turned to book writing four years ago after severe and permanent vision loss left him unable to fly, drive or read normal print.

"I had started various books in the past", Morten admits, "but changing circumstances always interceded and the scripts remained unfinished..." His current novel writing began as therapy to lessen the impact of partial blindness, but is shaping as a new and challenging chapter in his own story. "Thank God I chased hands-on experience while I could", he reflects. "My past is now providing a rich and vivid garden of memories, which I intend harvesting regularly in the years ahead."

He is currently working on two more novels. One is set in the Kimberley district of Northwest Australia. The other is an international thriller, intended as a follow-up to "The Benefactor's Monkey".


"THE BENEFACTOR'S MONKEY" by Christopher Morten. Synopsis The Benefactor's Monkey, like most good thrillers, weaves a colourful tapestry of fact and fiction. The blended images will beg the question: "How much of this is true?".

There was a brutal terorist war in what was then Rhodesia. That is true. It involved spies and lies, and all the other intrigue and bloodshed of such events. However, in Rhodesia a different type of death stalked both sides involved in the savage conflict. By the time it was officially recognised, the hostilities were nearly over. Neither side was to know that the new death was to claim far more lives than bullets, bombs, landmines and other implements of war. Far more.

The author was one of the first to be told of the New Death. The Benefactor's Monkey explains - hypothetically - how the New Death was born, and why.
The plot moves quickly about the globe and exposes much of the author's personal knowledge of Africa. It was gained over half a lifetime on that continent.
Despite a moving love story, this is not a "happy ending" book. The subject is far too dark for that, the forces far too intolerant. The tapestry itself, though drenched in blood, retains images of hope. The story line moves rapidly, building to a crescendo and final quirk, further encouraging the question: "How much of this is true?"



Mort and I go back a ways, hell of a nice guy - always has an interesting yarn or two to tell!.