[Hidden-tech] Starting my own small Business Website

[Alan Frank]

Peter,

Unfortunately, the IRS would treat that activity as a hobby and the 
losses as nondeductible.  For a sole proprietorship, you need to turn a 
profit in three of five years in order to be able to deduct the losses 
in the other years.  If you incorporated, you could carry the losses 
forward, but it seems unlikely that the tax savings would be enough to 
offset the cost (and hassle) of incorporation.

--Alan

P.S. I have recently passed the Certified Financial Planner examination 
and am open to doing some pro bono consulting until I land a permanent 
situation.


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Hidden-tech] Starting my own small Business Website
Date: 20.12.2021 09:58
 From: Peter S via Hidden-discuss <hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net>
To: hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net

Hello Hidden Techers,

I want to apologize up front for what is a serious 'newbie' question..
but I was hoping to draw from your collective wisdom, if possible.

I've built a small website that essentially aggregates all of my home
utility data (from the various utility websites) into one dashboard.
It's been a personal project of mine for the past few years, written
in Django, that I've essentially developed/hosted on my home Linux
server.  Its written to be scalable, so that it works for any US
State/City, assuming the web crawlers were written for the utility web
sites.  I see this as a hobby venture (that could grow to be more).

I'd like to go live with it, and make it available to some of my
friends/family, if they were interested in using it.

While I've been buttoning up things from a security perspective, I've
also been researching the associated costs of actually running a
website.

Specifically:

  	* Purchasing/Sustaining a domain name via Namecheap

	* Web hosting (maybe multiple nodes... one for main Django app, one
for Redis Queue workers, one for Splash Javascript rendering support)
via Digital Ocean, Heroku, or AWS.

	* Email Hosting..
  	* (Possibly) SSL Certificate purchase
  	* More?

I haven't yet decided on which hosting services etc to use (multiple
topics for other conversations).  My assumption is that in the short
(and most likely long term) this won't turn a profit, and would just
be a small money hole.

I thought it might make sense to at least capture these costs under
some sort of 'small business' umbrella.  My naive hope is that maybe
it would have positive tax implications.

I've never started a business of any kind before.

So.. what do I need to do?  I need to get an EIN from the IRS..  I've
heard an LLC may be more than I need.  What would be your suggested
approach?

Thanks in advance for your time and wisdom (and patience for my newbie
question),

~Peter
_______________________________________________
Hidden-discuss mailing list - home page: http://www.hidden-tech.net
Hidden-discuss at lists.hidden-tech.net

You are receiving this because you are on the Hidden-Tech Discussion 
list.
If you would like to change your list preferences, Go to the Members
page on the Hidden Tech Web site.
http://www.hidden-tech.net/members