The self employed home business has been a tremendous benefit to professional consultants. Consultancy jobs are naturally mobile, requiring a lot of time for preparation of materials. It also requires a lot of professional resources, information and materials just to do the basic work. A consultancy business really needs the sort of flexibility a home business can provide.
Example: Ann Jones, Business consultant
Ann's a professional business consultant. Her work involves analyzing and fixing business problems, organizing business startups, and a range of work which involves physically getting around, getting information, and liaising with clients on a daily basis.
Her home business is the perfect arrangement. It's her communications centre, and it contains all the professional resources she needs to do her work efficiently. Time management is her other major operational consideration. In many cases she has to work seven days a week, because she's got a lot of business. The home business is in fact saving her a fortune in time and effort. She only needs a phone and an internet connection for communications, but she also has two kids, and working from anywhere but home would have been a messy situation in terms of both time and communication.
Ann figured out that by working in a conventional office, she'd be costing herself half her week's pay just commuting, parking and eating lunch. She'd also have lost the equivalent of two working days in time on the job, per week, because of domestic commitments, commuting, etc, (3 hours a day) to say nothing of costs of maintenance on the car and savings on day care.
Being a business expert, working at home was her advice to herself. She's calculated savings of about $400 a week, including time which is now available to do paying work.
To work from home, she realized she'd need to check out the local laws and get the right licenses, and make sure it was OK to run a home business in her area.
She needed:
A local business license. These are needed in some countries like the US, but not required in others. In her case she also needed a license as a financial advisor. Approval from the local government authority for use of the premises as a place of business. (This usually relates to zoning requirements. Unless the use of a home is prohibited by these regulations, using your home as a place of business is normally OK.)
There are possible tax advantages, operating a home business, depending on your line of work. In Ann's case her home office, professional periodicals, etc., are deductible. She's even thinking of putting on some staff.
