This was yesterday’s “laugh or scream, I cannot tell which” moment: Apparently, if I want to get some more of the advertising I want to do working, I need a state of Pennsylvania business license, because:
- I live in Pennsylvania
- These sites want you to have a business license to do advertising.
(Thanks so much, TikTok and Instagram.)
I proceed to start my research, realizing along the way that this might be more important because if my books actually start selling, I might need to worry about thinks like business taxes and making sure the Commonwealth doesn’t look at me in a bad way.
My investigations originally brought me to this:
- To get that license, I need to register a business name.
- To do that, I need to send a form to the state for $70.
- Once I have that, I can get a Business Income & Receipts Tax (BIRT) number, and then I can get a city license.
It made my head hurt. It seems incredibly complex for “I am a small, self-publishing author who just doesn’t want to get in trouble”. So, I decided to poke around a bit more and found a completely different option that is specifically for the city that I live in and includes both the business registration and the BIRT number.
And so now I am registered as a business.
There’s no business tax if you may less than $100K, and I am waaaaaaaaaaaay below that. But if something good happens, I am covered.
Through this predicament, I forged ahead. Now my butt is covered.