penguinsix

One thing of note about a sole propreiter is that liability is all on you.

Now that's not likely a big problem if you are in a profession that doesn't incur much risk, but if you are doing something for which you might get sued one day (either say legal work or maybe building something) or if you are doing something in which you might want to get an office or employees one day, then you might want to consider the legal protection an LLC offers. For example, if you get an office and hire a secretary and then the secretary slips and sues, they could go after you personally for all your assets rather than suing the "company" which has limited assets.

Depends on your situation.

kins

I found the Maine Small Business Development Center Maine Small Business Advising & Training | Maine SBDC to be incredibly helpful when it came to understanding taxes, bank accounts and whatnot. They gave me free excellent advice. See if your state has an equivalent?

mrken30

If you mix a trip with business and personal use, my CPA told me to take the costs of everything (air fares, car rental ect) times the amount of days you use the trip for business/ total number of days of trip

petitefrancaise

Well, it looks like this will be going ahead so I would like to get a UK telephone number, Skype? any other companies?

tom169

A few years ago I was close to getting a job at this company: https://www.localphone.com/

I haven't used them in some time, but used to have a US number for my (now) wife to phone in an emergency.

mrken30

I still have my UK vonage account 10 GBP / month. Includes multi-ring and the ability to call from a UK number if required. This just rings on my cell and home phone.

There seems to be several companies that will just forward a UK number to any number you want, including a US number.

https://tollfreeforwarding.com/content/rates.html#

petitefrancaise

ok, bit of confusion going on here...

I will be calling people in the UK and I want them to see a UK phone number coming up on their caller ID. I also want to be able to hand out the same number for these people to call me back.
I know that I can buy a UK telephone number from skype and that call can be forwarded to my cell phone here in the US.

I just wondered if there were other companies doing this? Localphone doesn't appear to do this.

tom169

https://www.localphone.com/services/internet_phone

Their FAQ mentions "Setting Outbound Caller ID" so I think this has what you were requiring.

Not sure how the price stacks up to Skype.

mrken30

That is exactly the setup I have. When I call people it comes up with a UK number, confuses the hell out of people when I call US numbers.
It looks like I am calling people from the UK. I am also able to setup a schedule so for the times I do not want to be called it goes through to voice mail. Very useful for getting sleep due to time zone differences.

The way I did it was I setup a UK vonage account, bought a US vonage adapter and registered the adapted to my UK account.

littledorrit

You can get a U.K. Number through Skype and then buy a monthly call package to make the calls. I pay $6.99 month for couple hundred minutes to U.K. Land or mobiles. And I pay an annual fee for the U.K. Number. It think it works pretty well, only took a few minutes to set up and you can choose what city in the U.K. Your number is from (the area code), which was helpful for me...

Olly_

I have a UK number from DIDLogic and an Obihai Obitalk 200 at home.

A UK number is $0.99 a month, so a lot cheaper than Vonage.

It's set up so it rings my home phone (via the Obitalk) and my mobile at the same time. If I answer at home (so the call is carried via SIP) it costs nothing to receive, if I answer on my mobile it's about $0.01 a minute for the call forwarding. I think outbound calls to the UK cost about $0.02 a minute.

The Obitalk can connect to multiple SIP accounts and also connects to Google Voice for free US landline service

Bob

Google Voice, might be another cheap option for getting a UK number.

Olly_

I don't think Google Voice is available in the UK - they certainly don't offer UK telephone numbers.

yellowroom

I used them and rented a UK incoming number so that people in the UK dialled that and it was forwarded to my US phone. Good call quality, reasonable cost, good service. I could even pick what exchange I wanted my number so got one local to the person that called me the most and it was free for them to call me as numbers local to them were free on their landline. I think I paid 0.5c a minute to receive the call.

According to localphoneyou can also set up your Caller ID for outbound calls. So it looks like it may meet your needs petitefrancaise.

abbyj504

What everyone has said here is spot on! Make sure you are accounting for taxes in one way or another and make sure you are billing in USD so they absorb any difference in the exchange rate. Make sure you keep track of all your invoices, payments, and receipts so you have everything for taxes.