Freelancing

[RyanRyan52]

I want to start doing freelance programming/web developement
I was on a freelance site the other day and looking at some of the projects I was thinking to my self that I could easily make some extra money

My problem is that I have no idea about the legal part

My questions are:

Do I have to get liability insurance?
What do I need to do for taxes?
Do I need to get a business license?

Pretty much what I want to know is what do I need to do before I can start freelancing?

I know nothing about running a business (if its even considered a bussiness) or any other legal stuff

I live in Oregon

Thanks,
Ryan

 

[RyanRyan52]

bump

bump

 

[TomD1974]

The short answer (since this actually gets complicated):

You do not have to do anything to do this type of freelance work other than to contract with your customers for the work and declare the income on your taxes. No fuss, no muss.

However, forming a new legal entity (like an S corporation) could have some definite advantages in terms of taxes as well as liability limitation. What comes with that, generally, is quite a bit of hassle (meaning lots of ongoing correspondence and filings) for the average Joe that maybe does $5-10k in freelancing in a limited exposure scenario. By the latter I mean that if you aren't doing mission-critical stuff for the client, you don't have a heck of lot of legal exposure.

I would Google "Starting a Corporation <insert your state here>". Almost every state has a ton of step-by-step resources for this stuff.