Plan how you’ll end something … before you start.

I’m shutting down my website business and I don’t remember it being this much (paper)work to get it going.

If I’d known how it was going to end, maybe I wouldn’t have started.

Maybe because I’m trying to get it all done with a few phone calls and clicks. Maybe because I can’t wait for it to just be done with. It’s not as clean as, oh, I don’t know, closing your account at GoDaddy. Delete this, cancel that, stop auto renewal of services. I call people, mail forms, sign on dotted lines and try to understand things that have baffled me for years.

I’m also setting up a new Sole Proprietorship, so I need to do things there as well (new bank account, new EIN, etc.).

Here’s a bullet list of who I *think* I’m supposed to contact, based on my piecemeal research:

City / County

1. Office of the Treasurer and Tax Collector (TTX)
2. Office of the Assessor-Recorder
3. Office of the County Clerk
4. FBN (Fictitious Business Name–if older than 5 years, don’t need to dissolve)

State

1. Employment Development Department (EDD)
2. Board of Equalization (BOE)

Federal

1. Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
2. Department of Labor (DOL)[Important note this is very close to the LOL acronym … jus’ sayin’ … yes, I’m getting a little loopy at this point.]

Financial

1. Bank (Bank of America)
2. Payroll service (Intuit)
3. EIN (Employer ID Number). Cancel old one, create new one (for sole proprietorship).
4. Find any incoming automatic payments and change them to a new account
5. Same with outgoing

Are we having fun yet?

There’s something to be said with the decision among:

1. Work for a company,
2. Set up a Sole Proprietorship and
3. Set up a corporation.

Employees, payroll, taxes, and I didn’t have to deal with unpaid leave, sick days, health insurance and who knows what else my ostrich head-in-the-sand business strategy missed.

But now it’s over. I can’t imagine setting up another corporation unless someone else persuades me to do so and then … does it.