James (00:09):
Frank, I think I'm officially a business.

Frank (00:14):
Oh, I'm so excited. It's this part three of the turnip trilogy. I've been waiting all week for this

James (00:20):
in the, in the ethic final finale of turn of tracker 5 billion. No, I mean, so we talked about on the last two or three podcasts ago is I was fearful of releasing this app. Um,

Frank (00:34):
I antagonized you. I just kept pressuring you. I'm like, just release it dude. Just release the app and he didn't exactly heed my advice, but I think it was within a week. You did. So I feel like I helped push you over the,

James (00:48):
you did it. I mean by the time the podcast came out, I believe the app was released, so that is,

Frank (00:55):
Oh, okay. Okay. I'm going to take credit for that. No, just kidding. Good job, James. Congratulations. Um, I really wasn't antagonizing you. I felt a little bad for that. Um, so I'm really happy that you're able to release the app. Congratulations. Um, it's such a good feeling to get something out there. Um, I don't, I don't know how to say it cause words actually don't do it justice. It's such a good feeling.

James (01:18):
It doesn't do anything to you. You just released a huge update to continuous, which also congratulations. You've let us Pat each other on the back for the first two minutes. Thank you Jay.

Frank (01:29):
Uh, yeah, I don't want to steal your show but yeah, new update version of 1.3 coconut.

James (01:34):
Yeah, I liked your little promo video. That was very adorable. That was really cool. Uh, more of that. Uh, and you know, it's, it's, you've been working on something for a while, whether it's an app update or it's a full application and you get it out there and you go through the whole shebang, right. Even in your case as a pretty big update. So you could probably update the website, you could update the screenshots. I mean it's, sometimes these app updates while they're small, they have a lot of new features that you want to promote and people look at those photos. But one thing bothered me about my release on the Apple app store, which I talked about just a little bit. And then once I posted a few photos on Twitter, people kind of wanted more information and that is that previously all of my apps were released under my personal name, James Montoya Magno and now Apple has approved, we'll talk about some of the intricate parts of this approval.

James (02:27):
I'm putting this in quotes approved and migrated in quotes, my accounts to be a company, an LLC and it says refractory LLC. And um, it was a process and because when I started my Apple developer account, I didn't have an LLC. And in the middle of it I did have an LLC and now I am an LLC and I've been an LLC for years, a limited liability company, if you will. So individual member of said, and everyone in our discord told me to release the app regardless of it, you told me release app, just go for it, start the migration process. And then once I posted a photo that officially when I log into developer.apple.com it says refractory LLC. And people are like, what is that and how did you make that happen? And what does it mean to even start a company? And I don't think we've ever talked about that on the podcast in depth. Really.

Frank (03:19):
No, I guess we've circled around the subject a little bit, but I have to admit I'm a little depressed that the, uh, third episode of the turnip trilogy is the bureaucracy episode. But I guess you're following star Wars. I phonology here, but it's, I guess

James (03:35):
because now like money is involved and you want to make sure that the money goes and flows into the right places.

Frank (03:42):
Okay. Yeah. So starting a business, um, I think in the last episode I just gave the random vague advice. Everyone go out there, if you're intending to sell an app, go start a business. It's $75, you know? Um, the last time I did this was many, many years ago. It's probably a bit more expensive than $75. So you could probably tell everyone how much it costs, but you know, it's like three or four forms. It's not the most paperwork out there. And if you're super lazy, there's websites that can help you along the path. But I totally think it is worth it to start a business. But unfortunately it starts with four forms and then it's like four forms every three months for the rest of your life. Have fun. It is. Uh, so I believe in the state of Washington it was maybe $200 or $150 a year. Um, wow. I'm so out of date in Arizona

James (04:36):
zona it was $50. But then you also had to get a newspaper and a County to announce your company and then have proof of,

Frank (04:45):
Oh, there's something how it's, that's not even bureaucratic, that's just quaint and wonderful. I love that. What a community spirit thing. And you know, the newspaper ads are kind of expensive too, oddly enough. So that kind of stinks.

James (05:00):
Yeah. Although there is a, there's, funnily enough I remember doing it back then because it's of course per state. So like I had originally registered in Arizona and then I let that lapse in which I no longer have an LLC. So then I just started a new LLC in Washington where when I moved to Washington because you need to have like a physical presence there. And the first key tip is, um, either actually don't go to the post office and get a PO box cause PO boxes are pointless mostly cause a lot of things don't consider those businesses. A key tip is that find in your local community, um, a shop that offers a post, um, PO box style that's not the post office. FedEx and ups may even do this, but there's places in Seattle, there's quite a few of them. There's like these shipping pack places and you can get a box and it's your company's box and it's as almost if you're having an apartment there because you of want to detach yourself, your physical presence from your entity and you can go get this box somewhere and then that's your new address.

James (06:05):
So that's going to be 150 bucks a year. Right. But I recommend that in general because then it's one address that will never change ever. Which the biggest thing is you never want to ever change an address. That's one thing that I found the pain in the butt.

Frank (06:19):
I've done it several times and I think I'm about to do it one more time. So thanks for saying that you're filling me with confidence, especially the longer it lives here. Businesses, mine is like 15 years old now, so there are so many companies with so many addresses all over the place, but it is a wonderful time to go shopping for a new address. I kind of love that part. Like I used to have an address on fifth Avenue, New York city. Then I had, I liked shopping for streets, you know, so I go on the street that I want to be on and then find a mailbox there and I don't want to brag, but you know we have Ballard here in Seattle and there is a PO box place that is also a coffee shop.

James (07:00):
Yeah, it is. That's literally, it's like a packet and something or mail and something. It's so cool. I've gone in, it's not the one that I use, but I do know of that one. There's a few of those. So what a great idea. And I think, talk about the original subscription service. What a hoax, right? You pay for a little box and you pay them 150 bucks a year and they have like hundreds of them and you're like, is amazing. You know,

Frank (07:24):
making me feel bad. I actually have a post off you United States post service post box. Yes. Um, it's fine. It's fine. Yeah. That one's on university Avenue.

James (07:36):
You have to have it university. I know that that used to be mine. I just canceled it. So, um, now I will say the benefit of doing one of these places is because if you move let's say to another city or something like that, you can have them forward your mail every month or whatever. And that's super duper super nice. Anyways, and that's a business expense by the way. And by the way, that's a business expense. I want to point that out because you also want to set up a business checking account. I use sparked by capital one and now I have a refracted LLC on a credit card. I can expense things that are expenses such as a postal box. It's amazing. I mean I released an app and then I needed ads and you know what those ads are advertising. I mean it's amazing.

Frank (08:23):
It's not free money. I don't want you to give the impression that you're still spending the money. You're just getting a little tax break on the backend. You just totally distracted me from what I was going to say. I totally agree

James (08:35):
LLC. You want to register for an LLC? You want, you need an address, you need very little. It's very surprisingly, here's the best part of this.

Frank (08:42):
Wait, I'm sorry. I remember it. So I'm going to interrupt the banking part. It's kind of important and it's a little bit of a question Mark and I've gone through it a few times and I just, just for everyone to know, it's actually really easy. Even if you just want to do like your bank or anything, banks love small businesses because usually you make money and you leave money in the bank. So it's all good. Um, so don't worry about that. The only thing is, um, don't go there until you've already established your business and that means gotten your tax ID or whatever government regulations you have. Get all that, all that government bureaucracy out of the way and then go to the bank. If you rush it, it's awkward. Things are just weird. So just take your time. No rush.

James (09:24):
And we should also preface that we are not lawyers. So everything that we're saying don't, don't, this is not the gospel,

Frank (09:30):
this isn't lawyer stuff. This has nothing to do with law. This is capitalism baby. This is what we went through all up on this.

James (09:38):
So I have an LLC, I'm a single member corporation and that has different implications that we'll talk about later. But you, you're a, um, Kruger systems incorporated. You're an actual corporation incorporated non LLC. Is that correct?

Frank (09:56):
Uh, that's correct. But even in the United States, corporations are broken into several categories. And the category I'm in is actually an S corporation, which is, uh, it's a mixture of a sole proprietorship and a corporation. Um, it's very convenient from a tax perspective. Um, all the paperwork's just much simpler with an S corporation and your liabilities as an individual are easy to understand, but at the same time you get all the benefits of being a corporation and all the downsides. So benefits and downsides. So like an LLC, you have, um, some kind of legal detachment from it. Neither of us are lawyers as stated, we don't understand it, but there is at least some buffer lawyers have promised me that there is some buffer there between me and the business, which is nice. Um, otherwise the real difference falls down into, um, exactly how local taxes work. Um, how employees work, how, um, whether you have a board of board of directors and LLC does not have a board of directors. And a lot of that just comes down to how much paperwork do you have to file every month. Yeah.

James (11:06):
And for me, since it's just me and I never plan on doing anything else. I just did an LLC, which is the easiest. Um, and there's two different parts here and we're talking a lot of the U S so sorry for international India, you know, listeners. So there's going to be probably similar ASCA laws in your country, who knows though, but at least in the United States.

Frank (11:25):
Could I just interject one more time? Oh yeah. I started a business in India, Kruger systems private limited. So I actually have a tiny bit of experience doing all that over there. And over there it was quite a bit different from the U S though we all go into it. I just had to interject because that was a very exciting moment of my life. Starting a business overseas.

James (11:45):
So correction, the year, your PR, your laws in your country, you're going to probably differ vastly or similarly. Who knows? I mean, it's basically a who knows on a country and yeah, it's, it's, um, it's fascinating. And the reason I had started is because you're right, I, I started the, that you start with the paperwork, which is going to your local state in the United States as per state, not country and getting your LLC and in Washington there's a directory and it's super quick. You do it all online. You don't have to do anything. It's pretty amazing to be honest with you. And, and then beyond that there's,

Frank (12:20):
sorry, it did used to be paperwork up to just like, I don't even say 10 years ago, so it's kind of nice now. Real, real smooth.

James (12:29):
Yeah. I remember in Arizona when I did it, which was a long time ago, over 10 years ago, I did have to fill out a piece of paper and take it down to a place with a check and then, yeah, yeah. Then after that I could do it online. I'm pretty sure to renew that.

Frank (12:41):
Oh, but I should say when you go to do the bank stuff, you actually do want physical copies. Banks are still a physical copy kind of place. So you're going to have go find a printer at Kinko's or something and go print out all your online documents that you create.

James (12:56):
Yes, when I use spark business too, which is capital one to do it online, it was very complicated because since I'm an LLC single member, they, I don't have a tax number from the government.

Frank (13:12):
Uh, this is where it gets confusing. Yeah. So in the United States, in case you've never started a business before, you yourself have a social security number. It's how we pay our taxes. But when you create a business, it gets a number like that. This is at the federal level, at the country level as you called it, it's called a T employee identification number. In fact, E I N employment identification number. And technically you only ever have to get one of these if you ever hire employees. And I think that's the distinction that James is making here is that you never actually had to hire an employee because you're a single ownership thing happening here. And so you never got one

James (13:52):
that is correct. So the federal government considers a single member LLC, a sole proprietorship for tax purposes. And what that means is when I file my taxes or I fill out a w nine form for whoever, um, I put it under my personal name because it's me and it's my company. So sort of the, the LLC is the front face of me in a way, right? Um, however, if I had an EIN, it makes everything easier. It makes getting a bank account easier. It makes, um, Apple happy. Um, because the final step is for me to fill out a us talk tax documents and they really don't want me to use my social security number as an LLC, even though it's totally legal. And I called them on the phone. They're the nicest people in the entire world and they're like, no, you're going to have to do that. So I'm close.

Frank (14:45):
Yeah, I'm proud of you for, I like minimalism, like the, the problem with companies, once you start the paperwork train, it's a never ending train. There's always more paperwork to do. So I really loved your minimalist approach of not getting one of these tax IDs, but at the same time, everything I do with businessy stuff is always what is your federal tax ID and what is your state of business ID. It's always those two pieces of information that people want to the point where I don't have too many numbers in my life memorized James, but that's one of the numbers I have memorized all my tax IDs, both state and federal level. You just, you write them so much.

James (15:25):
Yeah, it's, that is a, it's kind of a pain in the, in the behind because Apple really requires all of the numbers because uh, you know, on, on, on Google play, it's really easy. You just specify the name that you want it to show up as and the bank account. You want it to go to, good to go.

Frank (15:45):
I've, I forgot to say like Bitcoin wallet or something that's like, no, we just sent you that money.

James (15:50):
The Google is like, we do not care and we're Apple. They care, they care heavily. Um, and it makes sense from a, they have an individual account and they have a corporation like you know, internal enterprise account. But for me, for the individual LLC, I feel like I shouldn't have to go the extra 5 billion steps. But there must be some reason because remember in the last episode we mentioned that you need this other number. There's yet another number, Frank in the business game called the Dunn's number. Uh,

Frank (16:25):
right. See I'd put it out of my mind all the way up until this point. I think you all heard my feelings about the DUNS last time. But yeah.

James (16:33):
Yes. The DUNS number, which is the dun and Bradstreet number, it's a nine digit identification number and they just have a register.

Frank (16:41):
It sounds so 19th century and outmoded and just like an anachronistic. Like let's move on people.

James (16:49):
It's the worst system in the world. So here's what happened. Everybody. Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about this and then we'll talk about business. We'll go to a commercial break before that and then we'll go to more business. But for me to get through this process because people were really interested in discord. Here's what I did. Um, it really wasn't terrible to be honest with you, but I went to Google and I said, Google, I will, sorry, I went to Apple and I said, Apple, I would like to change this to my LLC. And then they said, that's great. What's your DUNS number? Here's a way for you to look it up. Found my DUNS number, gave them my DUNS number. And they said, that's awesome. Your information on the DUNS account was not correct. So I was like, okay. And also by the way, I don't know how I got it done, this number, I don't know how it was created. Maybe automagically, who knows, nobody knows. Um, and

Frank (17:34):
can I say it especially gets tricky because there can be duplicates. Um, oftentimes I've done, we were mentioning address changes before about the mailbox. One of the downsides of an address change is the Dunn system constantly screws up and we'll create

James (17:50):
a duplicate business for you. And so you have to be really careful. And you know, I'm saying that I'm like, gosh, I should look up my company but I don't want to, I don't want to attempt it. I don't want to attempt that monster. If they don't dance, it's fun to look up the address of your PO box or wherever because you can see all of the businesses registered at that account. Yeah. Right. So all right, so my done stuff is not correct. So they say go and go to the Dunn's website and go fill it out. I said, okay, that sounds great. So I go to the Don's website and it's actually really simple. You find yourself on the Dunn's website and then you say, I would like to edit this. And they say, cool, we just need to verify that you are you.

James (18:31):
So I go in and I enter my information. They go, sorry, we can not verify that information. Please email us. You are a robot. We have detected that you are a robot. You were not able to identify the bus and every one of these scenes that James James, that is correct. And so I emailed the good people at DUNS and they're very nifty and they verify my identity and they say, what information would you like update it? And I said, all of it, it's all wrong. It's nothing is right here. And I think that as I say, here's the information that I would like and they said, okay, great and it will be updated within the next 24 hours. I said, this is one more interjection. Even that is modern. Um, it used to take a couple of weeks for them to update their stuff. Oh wow.

James (19:14):
That's pretty great. 24 hour turnaround, 24 hour turnaround. And for reals I went to the website about 24 hours later and it was updated, so surprisingly good. Um, so I wait for that to be completed. Okay. So I'm sorry, it just makes you think about the economic model at play here because you haven't paid a dime and you just went on a support call. That support call costs them about $12. So how much business do they have to do to recoup access to their database? Okay. Not side tangent. I just got lost in economics land. Not to mention I've been going back and forth with Apple on email like 10 deep, right back and forth with DUNS 10 deep. Now here's where it gets really good. So now I email back miles, my good friend, miles at Apple. What a delightful character and everybody at Apple, absolutely delightful to talk to.

James (20:10):
And I'm going to say talk because I actually talked to them to email as well. So Myles emails where you actually on the phone at some point, just you wait just so my good friend miles says, Hey, this looks great. Everything checks out. We'll send you a link to activate and migrate your account. He's like, just make sure you have these 18 things done ahead of time and classic Apple and install Photoshop and make sure that your iCloud backup is on. Um, no, no, it actually wasn't too bad. You mostly just needed two factor auth and there was a bunch of other things. So I already had all this stuff, so it was pretty good. So I was like, okay, great. I click the migrate button and I fill out some forms. Would you got to fill out the DUNS number, your company information? You go all right.

James (20:54):
It's all good. Migraine. And the cool part about the migration process is that you still have access to everything. You can update your apps, you know, everything happens during the migration process. The only thing you can't do is create new certificates or profiles. So not a big deal just during this momentary blackout phase. Correct. That is temporary. And I believe it also invalidates existing profile. No, not existing. Better. Not, that would be scary. It invalidates existing connections. So I had app center connected and I believe it invalidated that connection to my [inaudible]. Oh I think really I think interesting. I think I'm not positive. I need to test it again. So change your company name again. Yeah. So I need to test it again cause I haven't submitted a new versus going to try to, during the migration it was like, no. Um, so anyways, so I'm like this is great.

James (21:51):
And I go through and they're like, cool, this will take you know, 24 to 48 hours. I'm like, all right. The next day I get a phone call and Google screens and it said this is spam, but I get a voicemail from Nicole at Apple and Nicole says, Hey, my name is Nicole and um, we just need to validate, verify your information via phone. We usually make sure you're legit per, you're a person. Um, I'm not a robot, I'm not a robot. There's a bus there, there's a bus there, a traffic light there. Yeah. Oh, and I should say step back one more phase here. By the way, before the migration button was clicked, one other thing had to happen. You have to have a website. Frank, a actual website for your company. I went through this one and additionally you must have an email account at that domain name.

James (22:40):
James, have you joined the embarrassing corporate website club? Yes I do. refractor.com is, I already own the domain name by the way. I just, it was, it was just never really set up to do anything. The problem was is that I've had this domain in forever and it was on GoDaddy and it was on some terrible hosting plan and I really should just point it out. My ghost website that I had set up for my company ahead of time. Here's the problem, Frank, again, this is before the migration and Nicole is that I wanted to transfer my domain name to Namecheap and I wanted to do that because I needed an email address in goo. GoDaddy was 50 bucks a year and Namecheap was $10 a year. So I said there's no way I'm paying more than $10 a year for an email address cause I'm never going to use side tangent.

James (23:27):
How many email addresses do you get for that $10 you get one and up to five aliases. Oh, okay. Just one box, one box, one box. That's all you contact@refractor.com. That's what I picked. Um, so um, so I had to, I had to dance around. It took me six hours to transfer a domain instead of turn off all the things. I did this thing and then I canceled it. And did all this stuff. I was like, Oh my goodness, how to set up a CloudFlare account. I had to do this. I've had to set up my email and update the MX records and all this stuff. So that was like a whole day. And then I clicked the button, then I clicked the button and it worked. That's not bad cause you know, I had to go through all of this when, as a starting up my campaign because that was new website, new business turns out campaigns are businesses, um, and worse than that, they're like highly moderated or uh, what do you want to say?

James (24:16):
I'm transparent. You know, it's a lot of paperwork involved in all that. So it's fun. Like that order operations, you're actually more efficient than me. It took me at least a couple of days to get my email up, some little jealous. Moving pretty quick here, James. Let's just say it was a lot of long evenings of going and checking. Did it transfer, did it transfer it. So then I clicked the button and then I get this call from Nicole. But let's go ahead and first thank our amazing sponsor this week before this Epic conclusion to this story. Sync fusion. Yes. You noticing fusion, you love seeing fusion. We talk about seeing fusion all the time. I just shipped Island tracker and it uses about eight different sync fusion controls, graphs, charts are in the application, numeric up downs, these beautiful effect views and make the application look stunning.

James (25:01):
I love it. I love it, love it, love it. No matter what type of application you're building, st fusion has something for you. Web apps, mobile apps, desktop apps, Mac applications. There's Amarin forms. Actually sports like WPF Mac and everything is really cool. I'm a love it. So if you need controls for your application, you gotta check out sync fusion, sync fusion.com go there and do all the things. If you want to check out all this stuff and give us a little bit, love seeing fusion.com/merge conflict and give you everything that you need. You can even start a free trial or if you're, you know, in the community tier you can get this stuff for free basically, which is great. So check it out, sing fusion.com and tell them that James and Frank sent you. So good. You used a control. That's awesome. Yeah. So jealous.

James (25:44):
Every time I needed to control, I was like control, control, control, control. You think anything built in all think fusion. It's great. Most of the, a lot of the application is sync fusion controls or third party components, but then all the layout stuff like of the, you know, the collection view, the swipe view, that's all. That's all. So yeah, I would say the navigation, the high level stuff. Yeah. I would say even if I made it without the sync fusion stuff, I could have done the most of it. I would've just had to do some renders and stuff. And I'm like, why? Because I already have a community edition of this thing. I don't make a million dollars a year. I can just boom, get it. So, okay, well we'll get you to that million dollars a year. I was hoping, I love to give companies money, but I'll make that much money.

James (26:26):
So I go and I'm like, I get an email from Nicole and Nicole says, Hey, you know, you can email us back, it'll take up to a day or you can just give us a call. So I click on the button and literally they have a great system. It's like, Hey, do you need app support? What's your issue? And we'll give you a call within one minute you'll be on the phone with someone one minute. And I was on the phone with Nicole literally with Nicole. I have no idea how it happened, Matt, when Nicole within one minute and Nicole is absolutely spectacular. Every, every call with Apple. Amazing. Except for the last one. It was so good. It was good. Besides the last one.

Frank (27:04):
Well, you're leading us somewhere. I can't wait to hear about the infamous last call. Uh, so she was, was she still testing? If you're a robot, did you test her? If she's a robot retest, where are we doing at this point?

James (27:14):
Robot testing. She basically said, are you James? Is this your company? Give me your address and boom, right, whatever. No, no, like real. They didn't need my social security number or anything like that. Right. It's just like, Hey, just want to make sure that these details are correct and then we'll get it all set up and then she was really nice cause she's like, here's about what's, what's going to happen next? Now we're going to, once we approve it then the profiles will be turned off and you'll have to wait and they'll take a little bit of time. You'll get new tax forms and you'll get new agreements and all this stuff and the new name and it'll show up. So just give it a little bit of time. I said, okay, cool. So great. I it takes less than a few hours and a boom. I see refractory LLC, I tweeted out to the people with no credit. Wait,

Frank (27:58):
she's like chill out dude. Just chill out. Like go have a drink, like come back for and you're just like refresh, refresh, refresh.

James (28:05):
Pretty much pretty much and it's there. It's totally there. I'm so excited for the name. The name is showing up and I have like new options to add people or whatnot and I'm so excited and I fill out all the forms and sort of to fill out all the forms and I gotta fill out a tax form. Frank.

Frank (28:24):
Yeah. Oh and they make you do it. Like you don't have to fill out the tax form every time, but you're constantly re agreeing to the paid applications agreement like over and over like few times a year. I don't have a clue what they're changing. No, obviously that's not true. I have a lawyer and they explained it to me in plain words. No, I scroll through and I click yes because I want my money. Um, so you, you've just begun the other journey of re re saying yes to that form

James (29:02):
saying yes to everything. I filled out all the forms and then there's the U S tax form and this is the one that says, Hey, it was basically a w nine form. That's really what it is. So you can send Apple, your w nine or you can fill out the form online. Who doesn't want to fill out a form online that seems great. I'll, I'll enter all my personal identifiable information to apple.com. That sounds great. Um, and I get there and I'm filling out the form and it's really simple. It's, it's mostly whatever's on your w nine, which is like what's your legal entity name and what's your, you know, um, your EIN number or your social security number and what type of company are you so we can match it up. So as a, Hey, I'm a sole proprietorship, type in my social security number.

James (29:43):
And they say, no, you are not a sole proprietorship. Gene's wrong. The, why'd you let me select it? You know, I'm an LLC now there's not an option for LLC single member. This is the issue, Frank. Um, there's only, there's all a bunch of other ones under corporations. We'd like to take up half of that form. That is correct. There is. Um, I can, I can probably log on here. Let me see really quick here. I gotta go into apps or connect. I click on that, I go into my apps or connect and then I go down to agreements, tax and banking, banking information. Very easy to update because I already had it to my business account. The tax form that I have to fill out, which is the last part is it's LLC corporation, LLC disregarded entity. I don't know what that means. And LLC partnership.

James (30:35):
And I know I'm not partnership maybe disregarded entity. I don't know what that means. I don't like the sounds of that ad. But they said I'm a corporation. They said I'm an LLC. Um, thing thing. Yeah. Limited liability corporation guide in the name. Maybe I am. So it says for tax purposes and LLC with one member is treated as a entity disregarded. Wait, wait a second. This is what I am. You're disregarded. What's this? You start this and James, maybe this is what I am. So I did, Oh man, this would be, should have read the paper actually. Um, I filled out so many w nine forms in my life and every w nine comes with two pages of instructions. And I don't think I've ever read them ever, ever. I love it. Like you're like reading the manual and we're both learning something right now.

James (31:25):
It is. It's very true. So, okay, so this is great because there's the name as shown on the income tax and then there's a business name if different from above, which is my name, my personal name. You heard it here, folks heard it here first folks. So he's keeping it simple. Keeping it simple. No, it depends. It depends. If it lets me hit the submit button, we're going to do this alive on the air. It's going to be great. So it's like a PDF or like a web form. It is a beautiful web form. It's, it's actually nice, stunning website. Great. And it is apple.com where does that hosted? App store connect.apple.com/agreements. Nice. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's really nice. And they just have, they just have an area for your tax identify and identification number. And it's not like it's just clear text, just BIM.

James (32:11):
Just no need to hide that. Just put it out there. I mean, you're at home. I'm at home right now. So when it was an enter it and the problem I had was that they said that I was an LLC corporation and I couldn't use my social security number. I was like, Oh, bummer. Right, right. So I called them up and I said, no, no, no, I'm a single blah blah blah. And then the problem is they're not lawyers on the others. And you know what I mean? And they're like, it says that you're this thing. So you gotta this thing. We're all like art majors right now being like, what is the form stuff? I hope, uh, someone in the audience listening in here knows a little something there too about business or might be a lawyer can make fun of us a little on Twitter.

James (32:53):
I didn't try that a lot. Yeah. So it says here, so what are you going to do? Are you going to submit as a, what was it a degenerate here to degenerate and disregarded? Degenerate. What a great name for it. So here we go from irs.gov depending on elections made by the LLC. And the number of members, the IRS will treat an LLC as either a corporation partnership or as part of the LLC owner's tax return, AKA a disregarded entity. That is, I'm a disregarded entity, I feel. So it's about, Oh James, I'm going to get you a cake. Yeah. Happy disregarded entity day. It says here specifically a domestic LLC with at least two members is classified as a partnership for federal income tax purposes unless it files in eight eight, three, two a Frank and affirmatively elects to be treated as a corporation.

James (33:41):
That's weird. Um, Oh, so you by just saying yeah, yeah, for angles by quantity. That's really interesting. Yeah. And it says to people, obviously you can't file it as your personal taxes cause there's two of you and I guess so at three what that would trip the corporation flag I guess. I guess they're definitely a Corp I guess on this is for income tax purposes and LLC with only one member history as an entity or disregarded as separate from its owner unless it files form 83 two and ALEKS to be treated as a corporation. Ha, don't do it. James. Don't do it. Keep it simple. Definitely not. You don't want a tax ID. It's going to confuse everyone. Now that you know the terminology though, you can just walk into the bank and be like, Hey, disregarded entity over here, disregarded entity over here. Let me hit submit. Here we go. Three, two, one eight

Speaker 3 (34:27):
and, and

James (34:28):
it's spinning. Oh, tax ID entered can not be used a high your dot. Do they not support disregarded entities? I feel like you should take up a cause. So it looks like it will be soon on the phone with Apple. Once again. Are you going to do it again? Are you really going to avoid getting a tax ID and EIN? Oh, so it says here, okay, now, Ooh, enter your 10 this is the funnest of the thing, right? A tin. So they call it a tin, but it's in the eye. And for individuals, this is generally your social security number. However, for a resident ale, alien sole proprietor or a disregarded entity, see part one instructions on page three for other entities, it is your employee identification number. Where's page one? Well, that's where you probably want the original PDF. I think there is a download for the PDF. Yeah man, we were so close. Everybody read the manual that was getting to be like a D and D adventure. It's like in order to get through this store you got to get this key checked through the window anyways. More like doom. That's pretty much, um, this is what I've been doing here. So that's fun. We're not going to on a success story,

Frank (35:38):
you're ending on, I'm still in bureaucratic limbo. I mean I think we need a better ending to the turnip trilogy. Otherwise we're going to have to make it up. What's a four episode thing called quartet in airy?

James (35:52):
There must be, I don't know. I mean I'm looking at it and it's, it's super weird. Um, it says enter your 10 in the appropriate box if you're a resonating or not have your eligibles at 10. If you're a sole proprietor and you have a EIN, you can either enter your social security or EIN. They prefer your social security number. If you're a single member LLC.

Frank (36:14):
Um, it's just web form after web.

James (36:18):
So it is disregarded as an entity separate from an owner. I entered the owner's SSM or EIN if the owner has ones do not enter the disregarded entities EIN. If the LLC is classified as a corporation or partnership, enter the entities EIN, which I'm not. What if I select the am but put my social security number.

Frank (36:37):
Do you think that would work? It might. No, cause there's two different boxes. Are there different number of, I was trying to count the two numbers out in my head. I was trying to see if they're the same length they are. They are no different. Are they both nine? Yeah, with different dashes in the middle. Oh that's why threw me off anyways, so now I'm just upset about this whole thing anyways and that's what it's like to be a business. Yeah. Yeah. We really nailed it there. That is what it's like to be a business. I get letters from the IRS just randomly because they like to send you a letter sometimes and like you have a small heart attack every time they come in, but it's usually just because they screwed up something in the computer. Um, you, you have to file, um, state level paperwork and federal level paperwork.

Frank (37:29):
Don't you forget all of those James and for the rest of your life. So great. Awesome. Pretty much that's, um, that's how it does it. So yeah, I mean this is the Epic conclusion of Apple being very close to letting me submit this form, but then almost does not, it's almost like a database schema problem. Like their database just really requires an EIN. Like that's the primary key. You can't do anything without one. I am curious to see if you'll be able to stay minimal or a few. We'll end up with one. I would really like it.

James (38:00):
I'm going to have to call them and then then ask them specifically and walk through it again. But again, they are very nice on the phone. The last person I talked to, she was also delightful. Um, and she did send me an email, she said that I could either, you know, get an EIN or fill out a w nine and send it in. So maybe I need to just do that

Frank (38:18):
and fax it to them or something. But Oh, if this ends in faxing, I can't wait. I mean I still pay for a fax number. I pay for an internet fax number because so much business stuff is still done by fax. It's so embarrassing. It's $10 a month so that I can have a virtual fax

James (38:36):
number, but you can expense that. That was a business expense. Right? I'm still paying for it. Yeah. So it's not free money. So some people may be thinking like, Oh, like is there a lot of upside to even selling applications doing all this stuff? Right. I mean my, how this works is any money that I make from like Twitch streaming from ads, from my app sales, from advertising, from this podcast goes into this. Right. And don't forget that like it comes into my account in which I have to pay 30% or 40% of the government. Right. Because I'm not paying taxes on that. And then I also have to pay for you. Eventually. I paid yet I sent you a check in the mail.

Frank (39:19):
Yeah. And I'm going to cash it one of these days when the quarantines, that's only what can you scan it from your phone? Now? Uh, you know, I might be able to, uh, I almost started making fun of a bank, but I'm not going to go, they're not going to make fun of my bank. It'll get cashed. Uh, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's hard. Um, and then James, when you get on the employee side, you'll see it's really painful because you pay taxes on both ends. You pay taxes like, um, as the corporation. So people aren't social security. So the corporation has to put money into social security beyond what, uh, the person pays Medicare, same thing, percent Medicaid. I always get them confused, whichever one. Um, it's really depressing when you actually start having employees, but you know, social services, they're worth it. Um, we need to keep society functioning and fair for everyone. So we pay our ridiculous taxes.

James (40:16):
That's very true. And it's not too bad. So there's a, there's definitely the downside to, you know, you know, you get 10 90 nines, you know, you have to, I have to send you a 10 99 right. Cause you don't work for me. I treat you as an independent contractor. Um, so there's like, there's a lot of stuff to learn surprisingly. So all the things that I sort of just described are all learning experiences. I'm really glad that I know at least a little bit of it to like get on this podcast and have this conversation of my experience, but also like it's kind of cool just that I have figured that out.

Frank (40:55):
Yeah. And even 10 99 they sound simple at first, but then like you start running your business for a while and you start to forget like, do I send you the 10 99 or do you send me the 10 99 who's sending who, whose tax liability is this? Yeah, it's fun. I would say it's, it's worth it though. I like to complain about it, but it was always a life goal of mine to own my own business. And honestly, it's just a bunch of bureaucracy. It's exhausting, but it's simple. It's just a lot of simple dumb tasks like sitting on the phone constantly. And is it worth it? You know, in the long run? Probably not, but it's fun and it gives you that somewhat

James (41:34):
cushion. Yeah, I think so. And, and, and for me too, it was always like, who knows what all, what will become from it like years from now. And then if I establish it now, I don't have to think about it later. So even if you're not thinking about doing it or like using it heavily, I use my LLC for 10 years. I mean, between the old one, the new one made no money at all. I mean it was minimal. I mean it was whatever my website was bringing like 20 bucks or something like that, like a long time ago. Right. And, um, I mean, so it was a net loss and then how I've treated it surprisingly has always been a loss leader. So I've always wanted to break even basically black, like be in the black and on the red and on the green because that helps my income tax or my, my taxes at the end of the year. So,

Frank (42:24):
ah, that's why you keep saying right off now I see what you're doing. Well, no, no, no, no, not if you're not familiar people who make too much money need right now.

James (42:32):
Yeah. That's some write offs and a, you know, you need a new monitor, you need a new thing. If you're using it, it would mostly it's been around advertising and I've found that to be helpful because if I can, if we make money from sponsors, like our amazing sponsors infusion this week, we invest nearly all of that back into the business via advertising. Um, and you know, or other mediums of creating promotional goods, right? And those are different things that we use, um, to help grow the audience. And to me, I created this podcast with you because I wanted to do awesome things. It wasn't Tamika boatload of money, right? That's done by the way. We don't make a boatload of money. It's not where we're very good input. I got one, Frank gets all the money I don't get anyway. Um, cause I have the business though.

James (43:20):
When we first started, I made you take the money and then you said this is too complicated. My tax person is going to be mad. So I took it all. So it's not a lot of money. I, that's the thing. Um, um, but we do like to reinvest and that's the thing is I just want more people to, you learn stuff from us hopefully and give us feedback and be in our discord and for some odd reason, one to listen to us talk about this for 45 minutes. I have no idea who would want to at all.

Frank (43:46):
Well, I'm not sure about this episode. I'm just kidding. No, I wish there was an episode like this when I started my business. I'm totally the person that just jumps in the deep end. You know, I walk into the bank and I'm like, I want a bank account. And they're like, you need a business. I'm like, where do I get a business right downtown? So I drive downtown, I'm like, I want a business. They're like, well you need a name. I'm like, where do I get a name? Like from your brain? And I'm like, Oh, okay, pause. But I'm always just so spontaneous and learning on the job that I'm hopefully we saved you a few of those embarrassing moments that I went through, at least when I started all this.

James (44:20):
Yeah, it is fun. And you know, the, the, the most fun part of, I think starting a business, you get to create your own, don't name your own name for your company in a whole website. Just,

Frank (44:30):
just don't do it when you're through an iron Rand

James (44:31):
phase. Like I was Kruger systems inc. Um, yeah, I mean, Oh my mine, mine came off of it because I spelled refactor wrong for so long. So I, yeah, I still don't know how to write your company name cause I never know if you're mistyping it or if that's how it's time to refresh. It's like custard, but incorrect. Oh God. It drives me nuts. It makes, it drives me nuts. So dismiss. Hi. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. So super fun anyways, and you know, it is surprisingly doesn't take tons of money to, to do so. It is worth exploring. I think some of the tips I definitely learned along the way. Like I wish I had messed up, you know, the business address for so long, I had messed up. And it's great there too because then you can use that business address on domain names that you buy, of course on your checks that you have like, Oh, there's so many great reasons to do it that way.

James (45:29):
So, um, yeah. Right. Anything else? Any other like things that you think people should know about our mistakes? I don't know. Oh no. I mean we w w we'll go over all those mistakes and the next 200 episodes of the show, um, I would just encourage everyone to go do it. It's quite an experience and it's one of those things that is not hard. It just takes time and a little dedication and a little patience with, but, uh, it's just a good life experience. I think it's worth it. Do it while you're young, energetic, get all this paperwork over with. Yeah. And if you've gone through a similar experience as I have or currently battling with Apple to uh, get that tax form filled out, let me know what you did to get us all because on Monday when the podcast comes out, I'll probably be on the phone with Apple OB, my pre-build, um, joyous phone call with Apple.

James (46:24):
That's what it'll be. At least they've been delightful. So at least you got that to look forward to. They've been very, I mean, they've made it very easy. I don't even know what the Google one looks like, but I will say it was very delightful to click a few buttons on the website, be on the phone with them and within five minutes it was, it was astonishing. So the Google one for sure is a robot. You're going to want to test that one. Ask it to identify the streetlights. That's right. Like over the phone. Like we need a capture right now. I'm like, Oh, are you, sorry. All right, well, you know, thanks again to our amazing sponsor this week, seeing fusion. And of course thanks to Frank for putting up with all the shenanigans that I do every week, but thanks to all of you for listening. Of course, if you liked this podcast, don't forget to share it with your friends. Go to merge conflict that IFM your share buttons. There's all sorts of view episodes on there that you can listen to over 200 there's a discord link that you can come chat to us. I check that daily actually now, which is fun, and I think it's going to do it for this week's merge conflicts. So until next time, I'm James Mott's. Maggie,

Speaker 4 (47:26):
I'm Frank. Thanks for listening.