OT- Contractor

[Christopher Browne]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 11:53 AM, CLIFFORD ILKAY
<clifford_ilkay-biY6FKoJMRdBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On 06/21/2010 11:33 AM, Renata Rocha wrote:
>>
>> I'd like to know the details on how to start to work as a contractor
>> for the IT industry - if it's possible to do this FAST and FURIOUS.
>> I've been told you just need to go to a website, but nobody never gave
>> me the details. If one of you contractors can send me a howto on this,
>> I'd be very very thankful. I'll be offering a beer on the next
>> meeting.
>
> Hi Renata,
>
> Having just had this conversation with someone who is new to contracting,
> the following is close to a copy/paste from that conversation.
>
> There is no requirement for you to be incorporated from the outset. You
> could choose to operate a sole proprietorship. That choice is best discussed
> with your accountant. See this for an article on the subject:
> <http://www.lbwlawyers.com/publications/soleproprietorshipvsincorporation.php>.

Would-be clients may want to require that they deal with a
corporation, to give themselves more of a "warm fuzzy feeling" that
they know that you're employed by Someone Else.

When they're contracting someone, it's usually rather important to
them that they *aren't* hiring an employee, and under such
circumstances, it's NOT reassuring to say "Oh, a sole proprietorship
is more or less equivalent."

Clive's comment of "In my opinion, you don't need to incorporate right
away" is arguably a dangerous thing to say - if he's not a lawyer,
then stating opinions about legal matters is something the Law Society
gets pretty uppity about.  Lawyers never give statements that
specific, either :-(.

More likely, this leads to one of two outcomes:

a) You tell the would-be customer, "no, I'm not being employed via a
corporation," and they say "Thank you.  Have a nice day."  (And note
that there's no contract, as a result.)

b) You say, "yes, you can contract my services via the corporation,
MyCorp," and they say "Great, let's set up the paperwork."

There are lawyers that have "practices" in setting up corporations of
this sort; it tends to cost somewhere between $500 and $1000 to do so.
 The need to do extra tax returns and such is an unfortunate
complication, but if it's needful to get "outcome b)" then it's a
necessary evil.
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