How to proceed with business formalities?
Now that we've done the easy bit of getting our business to the point of being profitable and a bit more secure, issues like taxes and other things start to require attention.
At this stage, our business is not registered yet.
I have lots of questions and am not sure where to begin. There seems to be scattered information everywhere, but obviously it doesn't cover everything.
What kind of company is the right type to register? Does it even make sense to register at all or rather continue to operate as individuals?
How should we proceed? What potential mines lie in the road ahead? Where to start?
We'll hopefully be speaking to financial advisers and looking for accountants in the coming weeks, but I'd really appreciate some wisdom from you fine folks here first. I know many people here have a lot of experience operating a game dev business in SA. :)
At this stage, our business is not registered yet.
I have lots of questions and am not sure where to begin. There seems to be scattered information everywhere, but obviously it doesn't cover everything.
What kind of company is the right type to register? Does it even make sense to register at all or rather continue to operate as individuals?
How should we proceed? What potential mines lie in the road ahead? Where to start?
We'll hopefully be speaking to financial advisers and looking for accountants in the coming weeks, but I'd really appreciate some wisdom from you fine folks here first. I know many people here have a lot of experience operating a game dev business in SA. :)
Comments
Yup, incorporate now that you're earning money. Main reasons are tax protection, paying people, contracts and IP. It's a lot easier to not screw up with taxes if you've got an accountant helping you out, plus paying people (which I assume you'll want to do in future) needs a bit of setup but after that it's relatively painless and nobody will come knocking on your door to tell you that you owe UIF and back PAYE, blah, etc.
Contracts are a no-brainer: Who signs on behalf of who currently? Who owns the IP you produce? Registering as a company just makes handling so many of these things easier. It's also much, much simpler having a business bank account that only handles finances for your business, erecting some walls between your own finances and those of your company helps a lot. Plus it's a lot easier to get funding if you're a company (and there are MGSA-based perks like the potential trade mission as well)
Finally, find a good accountant that understands international tax crap. You're getting paid by people in the US, hopefully you've already filled out your W8-BEN and/or W9, but there might be other stuff around exchange rates and the like. You should also make sure that you're not going to get nuked by related tax withholding from the EU and the like if you sign deals there too, although I'm not sure how much Devolver handles that for you... Maybe you're lucky with them :)
But yeah, be a PTY. It's not expensive, or at least, it shouldn't be.
That is a great spell. The dislekcia spell and quite a few others around here are also formidable.
The point about getting an accountant that understands the international situation sounds like it will be interesting.
From what I've gathered so far a PTY doesn't sound expensive monetarily. I'd be interested to hear how it costs in administrative time and effort.
Also as dislekcia mentioned corporate bank account to help keep create a barrier between personal and corporate funds.
FNB help you register and a bank account and register your company, if I remember correctly.