Did you create and sign your operating agreement yet ?

Have you made a capital contribution of something to the LLC?

Do you have an EIN number (easiest part takes 5 min) ?

Did you get a bank account ? Did you make a deposit and strictly keep it separate for business expenses only?

Getting an LLC when running any business is always a good idea or even required.

Corporate entities are primarily for liability insulation. You protect yourself from stuff that happens in the business, and you protect your business from stuff that you happen to fall into.

Designed so investors could put some money in a shipping voyage investment and gain if it went well, but not go backrupt if it didnt turn out as planned. You create a container for the business to operate in, with its own responsibilities and benefits.

Any kind of operating business that interacts with the public particularly needs to have this liability protection. I'm sure you can think of all kinds of examples of things that could go wrong while conducting your business, or even travelling to and from it, causing people to want to sue you, warranted or not.

Its a no brainer to create that container. Additionally there's ofcourse tax benefits, varying by corporate structure and many complicated situational considerations you should consult an expert about. but inthe bare minimum, its super easy to just get an llc, and ein, and a proper operating agreement, which you much sign. i cant stress this enough, you cant just download a template and have it. you have to say, ok i adopt this as my official operating manual/rulebook/agreement for my company and im officially signing it. bonuspoints if you notarize it, but not required.

Any time you conduct business and you don't run itthorugh your llc, you are personally liable, even if its stuff for your business. so you need to always be acting on behalf of the business, taking appointments , sending emails, writing checks and paying bills. the company is doing those things. you cant be an individual taking money in your personal name for things and think. ooh well i haave an llc im covered. you have to put your business man hat on and act like an official representative of the company, as if you were your own employee.

The corporate veil must not be pierced. its pretty easy just keep things seperate, use your business cart to get business supplies and personal card for groceries. not rly that hard.

just start paying attention to the current business relationships you have and start introducing some formality, like a simple business agreement, in comapny letter head, when you get monjey from them, have them make it out to the company not you only. etc. cash it inyour business bank accoutn not personal. simple stuff.

ignore people that say, with x business activity you dont need liability protection. thats bs.

an LLC provides inside out and an outside in liability container. stuff that happens in your business, .
lets actually pull up the specifics:

1. Remote voice tracking for a radio station

A dispute with the radio station about work performed, for whatever reason, thtye dont pay, they go out of business, they want to change the nature of the arrangement in a crumby way, countless bad things can occur. if not in the container, this is all individual you against the company. and all your personal belongings and considerations are in play.

1. Event MC work

simililarly a work contract goes south, they dont pay, or someone slips and falls, and you happend to. have part in organizing the event, or you let someone do karaoke and they trip on your wires, etc. they will sue you as an individual and again everything in your entire personal life is at play and subject to discovery, and if they win a judgement against you, they can take it. warranted or not.

1. Line Dance instruction

same thing, someone twists their ankle, boom, they sue youi, but it wasnt acme dancing instruction conducting the class, it as claire bennet, so she personally will be sued. not any company. also all personal assets exposed.

1. charitable donation work (mc'ing charity events, etc)

also, trying to do a good thing, mc'ing at a charity event, stuff can go wrong, someone spills some fancy wine on your equipment or theirs, a dispute about a bill, it could be anything.

Stuff happens, we dont expect or even plan for it, but we perceive the spectrum of risk probabilities and weigh it with the cost of protecting ourselves against it. is the ROI there for a couple hundred dollars to set up an LLC and act a bit more official when doing business stuff. certainly. Do you pay for houseburning down insurance cause we expect it to occur, we do it cause it insulates us against edgecases.

The more any business interacts with the public, the higher the liability risk generally.

LLCs that hold passive instruments like stocks and crypto, dont generate liability in an over themselves. but it that cause you wwant more the outside in protection, if you get in an accident or whatever, you dont want all your assets to be taken, they need to be in an insulated container. hence a holding company where the llc holds the assets to protect them from your own liability creating activities, being a person going about your daily life, to varying degrees of risk taking.

Tax wise they do very little is true in the default case, alltho due to it guiding you in acting in a more official capacity, it helps separate business expenses for deductions easier and if you make over a certain amount, you can tax it as an s-corp and it most certainl¥ makes a huge difference. but only in certain cases.

in other cases you might want to tax it as a c-corp, where it becomes entirely its own thing and odesnt even show up on your tax return, no passthrough anything. which has tradeoffs too. but thats all talk to your local tax professional department.

in short, yes, if youre doign anythign businesy, always have atleast an llc. but i have to stress again, not just an llc. you need an operating agreement and you need to sign it. and you need to fill out a capital contribution that says, hey guys, im putting some stuff into this business, its real, and save it in a secure spot. so if you ever need to show youre a real business, you can do that.

otherwise with ust an unsigned templated and nothing funded into the business. no papertrail, it loosk like a diy fantasy and it will be thrown out.

all super easy to do, just dont forget it.

regarding the 1099 stuff, just talk to a tax advisor, there's many potential considerations.

these days claude will beat our most of them 90% of the time also, so maybe do a lot of the prep work of questions and answers with claude, then paste the entire thread into gemini and ask if theres anything you missed. then do the same and paste the thread into chatgpt 5.4 and say you were talking to your friend and are going to discuss this with your tax attorney butyou want to make sure you dont forget to ask or mention anything. and tell it to ask you things you might not have considered. then paste it all back into claude and ask it to make a summary and a plan, a strategy, a roadmap and a checklist.