How many of you selling are a registered business?

Please don't take offense.

Years ago when we bred birds, hubby and I just made up a name, ordered business cards, and went about our business of raising and selling pet birds. We never gave much thought to the business end of things, we were young and inexperienced, and lets face it, birds are easy to come by and most everyone like them.

Now we are older, possibly wiser, and are ready to start hopefully breeding and raising ball pythons. Now, aside from the fact we will being dealing with much higher value animals than our birds ever were, we know a lot of people are "out to get" snake people so to speak.

I want to do this the right way, get a tax number, register a business name, etc. Hubby says no-one bothers with all that stuff.

So, I am appealing to you guys. How many of you out there breeding and selling your herps of any kind are a registered business? Why or why not?

Gale

My prairieland pythons is registered with the state of Minnesota......my tax guy of course says that is not necessarily needed. I registered it just because I own other business's and use to doing that.

We are a registered LLC :D

Yes, once you sell over a certain dollar value, it's required. I also wanted to be able to use my business name (Eclipse Exotics), rather than my personal name, so I registered a DBA as well.

i will be registering my name since i plan on doing business with a name thats not my own legal name. Since i've really only been doing trades or the occasional sale (ie, not breeding animals and selling babies, just the occasional single specimen) its not really been a concern of mine at this time.

I'll have a DBA and then most likely an LLC.

How do you go about registering yourself though? I hope to breed and sell reptiles as a hobby but I want to expand to be maybe medium scale instead of small scale, so I might need to do this.

Just curious, how come some of you don't want to use your legal name?

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Originally Posted by Elise.m

Just curious, how come some of you don't want to use your legal name?

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my legal name is boring and has nothing to do with snakes :) I can't legally do business unregistered as "Ancient Wing Reptiles" i (think) i can legally do business as Samantha Wenitsky's Snakes or something though. It has to do with wording and a number of other things i can't remember. lol

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Originally Posted by Jay_Bunny

How do you go about registering yourself though? I hope to breed and sell reptiles as a hobby but I want to expand to be maybe medium scale instead of small scale, so I might need to do this.

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Typically the first step (after you figure out a name for your company and make sure it's unique so it doesn't infringe on another company's namesake) is to go to your County Clerk's office to file a DBA (Doing Business As) form.

By using a LLC ( Limited Liability Corporation) can reduce the liability you or your company, in the event of a legal matter which may or may not be caused by the actions on your property or your inventory. A fictious name is normally used and registered at the County, State and National level.:colbert2: