Setting Up For Commissions

PlanetAlexander

Active Member
Aloha RPF, I've been hoping for a while to start taking prop commissions. I thought I had everything ready to publicise it, when I was reminded about things like taxes and starting an actual business.

I know there's a lot of people here who have done commissions, especially for people they haven't met, so I'm wondering; what legal stuff should I think about before taking commissions, such as taxes (hopefully paying over PayPal), registering a small business, contracts, etc? Whenever I search something about "commissions", it always brings up things like real estate.

I'm curious about any country, but if anyone has anything Australia specific, that would be great. Cheers!
 
Aloha RPF, I've been hoping for a while to start taking prop commissions. I thought I had everything ready to publicise it, when I was reminded about things like taxes and starting an actual business.

I know there's a lot of people here who have done commissions, especially for people they haven't met, so I'm wondering; what legal stuff should I think about before taking commissions, such as taxes (hopefully paying over PayPal), registering a small business, contracts, etc? Whenever I search something about "commissions", it always brings up things like real estate.

I'm curious about any country, but if anyone has anything Australia specific, that would be great. Cheers!

I know you are not int the USA, so perhaps the following won't be helpful, but this is how you would do it in the states:

If you run all payments through Paypal, they will provide you a 1099 at the end of the tax year. I believe anything under a certain amount, they do not provide one as they feel you did not make enough to consider this a business. In that case, still claim the income but you will not have a 1099, just print out your sales history for your records.

You also should keep receipts and logs for travel that are associated with your business. Take all the writes off... like internet, square footage of your work space, a percentage of electricity, etc. Anything you use for you business should be a write off, and if you work at home, it will be a calculated percentage of usage as you also share the space with leisure living. The best way to do all the calculations is to go to a licensed accountant at the end of the year with all you paperwork and receipts so they can guide you through the deductions process.
 
Moviefreak Thanks! Even if it's not Australian, it helps.
My Dad has done a lot of work with economics and accounting, so he'll be able to help with calculating taxes, but we both don't know about how it works with commissions. Thanks for mentioning PayPal - I assume the "1099" is an American only thing, but I'll look into what I need to know for Australia.
 
In Australia you'll need to consider GST. I don't think it kicks in until you hit certain revenue limits but you'll need to know what they are.

Slightly unrelated but I'd also look at the people on the RPF who have failed at this and been banned. Learn from their mistakes.

It annoys me that many seem to push all the risk almost entirely into the buyer. But maybe we only hear about bad sellers, not so much the bad buyers.
 
Upgrade to Premium Membership here so you can advertise your business here
And since you are using this forum to promote your business and take orders in the Junk Yard, you can write off the Premium membership fee as a business expense.
 
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