Hello everyone, this is my first post. I'm glad to be here! It looks like a great community. My question is regarding a site I am developing. It's a Free Online referral resource that I've created for a particular niche market. I am not going to do Any buying or selling of anything on the website. So my question is, do I need to register it as a business and get a license for the site if all I am doing is referring people to other sites? If it makes any difference, it is going to be run in Canada. Thanks!
If you are running the "site" in canada where are you based? will there be any money coming in at all (eg advertising)? In the UK there is no legal requirement to register as a business however you must inform the tax office that you are now self employed. If you dont register a business however you and the "company" are legally one and the same so if someone was to sue you your personal possessions are at risk where as with a registered company you are two separate entities and so only what the company owns is at risk (but there are negatives too)
It's based out of Canada, and will be run in Canada... it will basically be a service run from my home. I will have money coming in, from getting referrals on websites and such. (For example, Someone clicks my referral link and is taken to a Pay Per Click website, and I get a commission of the clicks they do) But, individual people do this all the time, and they don't have to register as businesses to make money from Pay Per Click websites. I will not get any income directly from the users who visit my site. Just from the websites I refer those users to.
I cannot speak for canadian law but in the UK (which tends to be fairly similar) you wouldnt have to register as a business but you would have to notify the tax man you were doing this and then pay the appropriate taxes at year end.
Thanks for the reply, AstarothSolutions! Does anyone happen to know where I would go to find information regarding this in Canada? I've checked the governemnt website... I personally couldn't find shit. Nothing regarding a "Free Service" in Canada at all. Help!
As long as your business is not making over 30k a year, or in total, not sure of what it was exactly, you dont have to register it. THOUGH! If you dont work, or if you do work, you still have to claim income so revenu canada can charge you the appropreate taxe bracket. Anything under $9000 TOTAL income a year dosnt get taxed, that means all your jobs combined. So you can see what Im kinda getting at, registerign a business or not, and paying taxes are two different things. If your really worried, not to make a mistake, and I myself am like that, register under any business name(dosnt have to reflect your websites name, but good to be consistant) as an sole propriatary. Costs like $120 straight from the goverment. Online sites charge like a 40-80$ fee to do it for you, most accountants charge like an extra $20. Its really cheap, and you dont have to worry about pst gst numbers too much unless your making allot of money.