Finding Lathe and Mill Work

Brad125 said:
Yes I actually went to a local lawyer in town and verified that I was indeed allowed to do gunsmithing at my current residence however I wanted to form an LLC and that means I can have no mix of personal life where the business is to be conducted. Meaning I can’t have any items I use for my own personal use such as a washer or dryer for example in the area business will be conducted. Business and personal have to be split. I could have done a sole proprietor but I don’t want that I want an LLC. No mater either way cause I am not allowed too. Cost for lawyer here is 6,000.00 to do the paperwork.
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I think what your lawyer is talking about is if you write off your shop space on your taxes, then it has to be 100% used for business. If he was saying your workspace from a liability perspective needs to be 100% separate, then that is new to me. I chose not to write off my home office for my business since it is a guest room and not worth the effort to segregate. Another important aspect of an LLC, keep your business finances completely separate from your personal, otherwise a good lawyer will be able to pierce the liability protection and the LLC becomes useless. It also helps you keep all your expenses in one place so filing taxes each year is easier.

$6,000 to file an LLC is insanely high. It is simple enough to do it yourself, but if you wanted someone to do it for you, find an accountant, should only cost a couple hundred plus whatever the state filing fees are. I did two LLCs here in CT, I think it took more time to find the right paperwork then it did to actually fill them out.
 
Brad125 said:
I completely understand, it was the advise from my lawyer to file and LLC, I then contacted a company for insurance aswell. It was awhile ago but I remember insurance was pretty high.
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Find a good insurance agent that will take the time to explain what goes into the pricing. Doing certain activities can drastically increase your insurance premium. I chatted about this with my agent when I opened my consulting company many years ago and don’t recall the details, but she did mention they are very picky about people designing or making parts for things like cars, planes, etc where their liability would be higher, which means your premiums will be higher. Since you are planning on gunsmithing, that might put you in a higher liability bracket, or limit your choice of carriers to the higher priced ones. When you are just starting out, you might want to limit what you will work on to lower liability parts until you have more cash flow to afford the higher priced insurance that covers more things. Since insurance laws vary by state, this could just be because of the laws here in CT, but it could be similar in your state.
 
Ischgl99 said:
I think what your lawyer is talking about is if you write off your shop space on your taxes, then it has to be 100% used for business. If he was saying your workspace from a liability perspective needs to be 100% separate, then that is new to me. I chose not to write off my home office for my business since it is a guest room and not worth the effort to segregate. Another important aspect of an LLC, keep your business finances completely separate from your personal, otherwise a good lawyer will be able to pierce the liability protection and the LLC becomes useless. It also helps you keep all your expenses in one place so filing taxes each year is easier.

$6,000 to file an LLC is insanely high. It is simple enough to do it yourself, but if you wanted someone to do it for you, find an accountant, should only cost a couple hundred plus whatever the state filing fees are. I did two LLCs here in CT, I think it took more time to find the right paperwork then it did to actually fill them out.
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That’s what he was going to charge me. I was under the impression that you needed a lawyer to form an LLC. He indeed told me that I could not have any personal possessions or nothing that wasn’t directly involved with the LLC. 6,000.00 was to do all the paperwork and write a business operating agreement. I thought that was really high but only he and a guy in Harrisburg does LLC for gunsmithing.
 
Brad125 said:
What is Xometry?
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I think we went over this before . Basically , you do the work and don't get paid . Check out all the complaints about them on the net . I warned Brent to stay the heck away from them not too long ago . ;)
 
mmcmdl said:
I think we went over this before . Basically , you do the work and don't get paid . Check out all the complaints about them on the net . I warned Brent to stay the heck away from them not too long ago . ;)
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Yea I think I’ll stay away from that, I don’t have the kind of equipment for the things they want made. I like doing manual stuff.
 
I've had a similar idea, but mostly interested in figuring out something I can make, that people would buy.

Advantage to finding a widget you can produce, is it puts the work on your schedule. Crank them out at your pace, then sell through eBay, Etsy, farmers market, local shops etc. When supply gets low crank out some more. No getting over your head finding you lack the tooling or skill to complete it, no time conflicts with your personal life, like sick kids, vacation etc.

I'm semi retired with an 8 year old, my wife went full time at work when I retired so I'm also doing the Mr Mom thing.
I was always at work with my older son, so I'm enjoying being able to take the younger to school, go along on his field trips etc, but it is a change.

I am still able to work at times so have been able to ween myself away from work which helped.
 
Brad125 said:
That’s what he was going to charge me. I was under the impression that you needed a lawyer to form an LLC. He indeed told me that I could not have any personal possessions or nothing that wasn’t directly involved with the LLC. 6,000.00 was to do all the paperwork and write a business operating agreement. I thought that was really high but only he and a guy in Harrisburg does LLC for gunsmithing.
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You can do an LLC on your own, but a lawyer can help write up the operating agreement so that you are properly protected. An accountant is good to have as well to make sure you are set up correctly financially for taxes. In most businesses, the operating agreement is easy, but for gunsmithing it appears to be more involved since you are an FFL and need to take that into account. Even so, it looks to me that they are fleecing you at that price, I can’t imagine the operating agreements are that different that most of it is not cut and paste.

The only exclusivity requirement for an LLC I have heard about is for tax purposes, you can’t write your workspace off on your taxes if it is not used exclusively for your business. I’m wondering if your lawyer thinks by having personal use in the same area as your business increases the risk of the limited liability being pierced? I haven’t heard of that happening, but I’m not a lawyer either. The cases of piercing the limited liability is generally when personal finances are used, or you don’t do business as your business name. That is something to clarify with your lawyer and do what they say and not some random guy on the internet.
 
I would rather do machining just because all of the paperwork and regulations involved in gunsmithing. I have a buddy that’s a gunsmith, now he is swamped with work but he complains all the time about all the paperwork and he says they change regulations constantly. He says he is tired of keep up with everything.
 
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