Reply To: Ethics/legality of freelance title?

[nca]

From my limited experience–

 

Sure, you can use your own name or even “your name DBA (doing business as) ________” However, you’d be considered a ‘sole proprietor’ and any legal liability would fall directly on you personally, meaning that if you omitted something from a plan or built something which led to you being liable for restitution/damages the court could go directly to your personal assets, ie house, etc.

 

Starting a legitimate business entity isn’t that hard. As far as I can remember all I did when I did design-build in years past was register my business name with the state and pay a lawyer $300 to incorporate. You can pay estimated quaterly taxes or more likely pay at the end of the year if youre just starting out. I’m sure others here can tell you more about this.

 

Otherwise, I think what youre asking is whether you can use a business name or not. I don’t think it matters. I’ve had my former business name as my primary checking account for a long time. You can either write checks out to me or my former business name, but that really doesnt mean anything, except I pay fees every month that I really dont need to.

 

I would stick to using your name and possibly DBA for now and think about registering with the state.