Anyone here established as an actual business for their photography?

>>2921554
You mean like proprietor of a locally sucsseful 'XYZ photography' """company"""?

And what legal aspects do you want to discuss? There are the same rules and laws for you as for anybody else. Pay your taxes. Always make written contracts.

And that's the whole story, bro.

I can't speak to a photography business specifically but I know a little about business structures.

A LLC is a very popular structure for people who want to protect their personal assets and it makes sense if you have business partners. However it will not protect you from personal liability suits because even if you form an LLC they can still hold you personally responsible because you are the one performing the duties.

Basically pay your taxes and don't get caught up in the "I can just write it off as a business expense dodge", if you ever get in the IRS's black book they will keep coming back to you like birds to a feeder.

>>2921648

Yes, always get everything in writing and document. Even in cases of he-said-she-said daily documentation in a journal format can add serious weight to your side. I keep a little pocket memo book and a pen in my pocket and I always jot down notes during meetings, after meetings, or any correspondence.

>>2921554
Lawyer here.

Here's the deal, corporate laws change state to state, country to country, so what works well for one person may not be an option for another. Here are some general thoughts:

>>2921648
>Pay your taxes.
>>2921651
>Basically pay your taxes
Sure. That sounds great, but that's the whole point of figuring out a good corporate structure. A little bit of planning on the front end can save you a ton in taxes each year. One of the biggest benefits of an LLC or an Inc. is that the IRS will let you classify yourself as a S-Corp, which has great tax benefits.

>>2921651
>A LLC is a very popular structure for people who want to protect their personal assets and it makes sense if you have business partners. However it will not protect you from personal liability suits because even if you form an LLC they can still hold you personally responsible because you are the one performing the duties.
Not true, at least not on a large scale. Some states in the US have weakened LLC protections, but on the whole, if you keep your books right and don't mingle your business finances and your personal finances, an LLC can offer a great amount of protection.


Personally, I'm a big fan of incorporation as an LLC or an Inc. followed by classification as an S-Corp. Inc.'s will require a little more work on your part, but it's not bad if you get in a routine. LLC's great if you don't want to do much work at all, but I think they can also cause people to become lazy and careless with co-mingling money. It may seem crazy to a lot of people, especially if you're not making a lot, but it's totally worth it to have a CPA handle your corporate tax issues. Sure, you'll have to pay money, but the money they can save you is almost always worth it.

>>2921723

There are ways to reduce your tax burden but I'm not sure how much you're going to see on the scale of an individual operating as a photographer.

A LLC will help provide some protection under the corporate veil but again as an individual providing a professional service you lose most of the protection anyway. I suppose it could provide protection for personal assets from a lawsuit for damages from an unfulfilled contract but that won't really kick in until you've already been dragged through the court system and your professional reputation is mud. It could just be as easily resolved in the contract instead.

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If you are in the US I would go talk to your local Small Business Association and get information from them. Assuming your in a halfway decent sized city your local should have one. They can walk through the relevant laws and how to do the paperwork.

I formed an S-Corp for the gallery I ran, no regrets. It helped with taxes and kept everything very separate.

>>2921730
>provide protection for personal assets from a lawsuit

That's the point of a forming an LLC, it keeps personal and business assets separate to prevent a lawsuit from wrecking you completely instead of just your business.

>>2921554

Another great tip is to have a second LLC, the second LLC owns all your equipment, camera's lights, computers everything needed for your work, then your photo LLC rents your photo equipment from your other LLC on a monthly basis, if you are sued your photo buisness basically owns nothing, you can do something similar if you own a building you use as a studio, put it into an LLC and rent it, spend a few dollars and talk with a good business lawyer

>I am in Aus, keep this in mind

Don't bother with any of the shit suggested so far unless you plan on being dodgy as fuck.

Start off as a sole trader, this is the most basic business structure, you are potentially liable but you can get insurance to cover yourself for any legit accidents (public liability insurance Is a must).

After you set yourself up as a sole trader, find a good accountant and keep your books in order.

>sauce
Full time photographer running my own business clearing 150k+ per year

>>2921723
There's no way you are a lawyer.

>>2921820
>>2921723
>"lawyer"
>"photographer"

>>2921763

My point is that it will not protect you from personal liability because of negligence or personal injury. You can be incorporated and still lose personal assets.

>>2921723
>S-Corp, which has great tax benefits.
>>2921761
>S-Corp for the gallery I ran, no regrets. It helped with taxes and kept everything very separate.

Can you explain how it helped with taxes?

>>2921723
Don't listen to the retards please,

thank you for the advise!!

>>2923361
Oh, don't worry. It takes a great deal more than some regular /p/ shitposting to rankle me.

>>2923358
Sure. This is some very general advice, but here are a few big tax advantages to having an s-corp for a small business.

First, and perhaps most importantly, an s-corp allows flow-through taxation. This means that you are a full corporation, but you aren't taxed at the corporate level, i.e., you don't pay federal corporate income taxes. Ordinarily, a corporation will pay it's own corporate taxes. Then, each employee will pay taxes on their income. An s-corp is generally going to be a small business or sole proprietor. If you're the only owner and employee of the business, paying corporate taxes and individual taxes means you are taxed twice. An s-corp fixes that. The downside, of course, is that ownership must always remain restricted to you or a small group of people. So you can't be a big public company. If you're starting a small photography business which would never go public anyway, it doesn't matter. If you are starting a small computer company and want it to go huge with a massive IPO, then you can't do that with an s-corp. So, in short, flow through taxation is huge.

Second, connected to that is the fact that you're still a full corporation with full corporation protections. As the owner and sole shareholder of an s-corp, your personal assets are not liable for corporate debts and liabilities. Again, though, you have to keep your shit separate. When you co-mingle finances, you risk losing that protection.

>>2923367
>>2923358
[cont.]

Third, you can classify income in tax-favorable ways. This is one of the more complex benefits of an s-corp, but it can save you the most money if your business really takes off. Say you make $10k a year. You'll be taxed at the lowest income bracket there is, so it doesn't matter how your income is classified. But say you make $300k a year. Then a significant chunk of your income will be taxed at the highest bracket. With an s-corp, you can classify a significant chunk of your income as a dividend, as opposed to salary. This means that your dividends will be taxed at the capital gains tax rate, which is lower than the highest personal income tax rate. Basically, you classify your income for personal tax purposes up to the rate of the CGT. Then you classify your income above that as a corporate dividend, which enables you to limit your taxes to the CGT rate. Essentially, you limit your tax liability to no higher than the CGT. (In reality, if you earn *way* above that rate, a good CPA will probably advise you to still count some of your income as salary and to accept the slightly higher tax rate, just to avoid IRS scrutiny. Still, though, it can save you a ton.)

Off the top of my head, those are the three biggest benefits. NG above said that it helped him, so I imagine it was something of this sort. He may have another perspective, though. S-corps are very useful little structures.

>>2921730
>>2921763
Lawyer here again.

While I'm at it, here are a few thoughts on this, since different people seem to be talking about slightly different things.

An LLC protects the owners of an LLC from liability for the negligence of the employees of the LLC and from the general debts and liabilities of the LLC. So, if an employee fucks up and injures somebody while performing their work, the LLC can be liable, but the owner of the LLC usually isn't. Similarly, if the LLC is sued for breaking a contract, then the LLC is liable, but not the owners.

However, if an owner is personally negligent, he is not personally protected by the mere fact that he has an LLC. It's tricky, because in most cases there is usually a mixed question between the acts of the owner and the acts of the LLC. Ordinary business acts which are a part of the LLC will fall under the LLC, but non-business acts (or acts of malpractice or fraud or negligence while conducting business) will not be protected. It's important to keep in mind, however, that not every bad act is negligence. A wronged party might have a claim against a business for a business act that is not necessarily a negligent act.

In the end, this is why it's a good idea to actually figure out what type of business you're running and what the best corporate structure is.

>>2923376

Right, these are the things I was talking about that are not protected by the corporate veil, particularly since I was presuming the OP would be the sole employee. To me it seem like most of the rest can be covered by the terms of the contract and business insurance.

>>2923782
>particularly since I was presuming the OP would be the sole employee
True. Most people starting out are sole employees. However, it's not at all uncommon, especially in wedding photography, to have an assistant or second shooter. Plus, again, not every suit against a photographer would be a suit for negligence or fraud or something of the sort. If it's just an ordinary business suit, it will likely go against the LLC.

>To me it seem like most of the rest can be covered by the terms of the contract and business insurance.
The trouble here is that the laws for what is valid to put in a contract can vary wildly from state to state. It's not uncommon for some jurisdictions to have laws in place which prohibit contractual terms which limit certain types of liability or which indemnify against certain acts.

Of course, that doesn't mean you shouldn't put that stuff in there. Heck, it's very common in the legal world to put terms and limitations in a contract which you know aren't enforceable. Why would we do that? We do it because we know that most people are scared of contracts and will simply assume that everything in a contract is enforceable. It just cuts down on litigation.

At the same time, it doesn't hurt to also have a corporate structure in place as an extra layer of protection. People worry way too much about startup costs or about compliance with having an LLC or a corporation. For the most part, forming and LLC is shockingly easy. Forming a corporation isn't really that much harder, either.