Lots of good advice about corporations and I thought I'd throw in my two cents about finances. - Find a CPA and a lawyer you can work with. Choose supporting

Lots of good advice about corporations and I thought I'd throw in my two cents about finances. - Find a CPA and a lawyer you can work with. Choose supporting professionals that match your risk tolerance. The self-employed can be very aggressive regarding taxes, litigation, and financial engineering (and likewise accept more risk of audits and penalties.) If you want to be aggressive, choose an aggressive CPA and an aggressive lawyer. If you're more conservative, do the opposite. Don't expect that a professional will be conservative just because she works for a larger firm. In fact, the opposite is often the case. - Get a business checking account and a business credit card. Many banks offer free checking and no fee credit cards to small businesses. Try to be good about using the business accounts only for business expenses and you'll be much better off at tax time. - Open a high-yield money market or savings account. Don't let your cash sit around in the checking account. Even with today's crappy interest rates, you can make a few bucks each month. Your bank might have good rates or you can look at Everbank or Capital One. (Costco members get a rate bonus at Capital One.) - Set up a retirement plan. A solo 401(k) or SEP-IRA is simple to set up and you can save a ton of money for retirement and help save on your taxes. A solo 401(k) lets you contribute the most (up to $49,000/year,) but it's a more of a pain to maintain, especially if you plan to have employees. Talk to your CPA about which is right for you. T. Rowe Price, Vanguard, and many of the other big financial firms offer cheap or low-cost small business retirement accounts. - Talk to a CPA and ask them to explain how to pay yourself a regular salary, withhold taxes, withhold retirement contributions, etc. Actually doing the payroll yourself is not hard, but there are plenty of companies that will administer your payroll for $30 - 60/month if you don't want to do it. - The more clients and expenses you have, the more you need some sort of accounting package. If you have one or two clients and few expenses, a spreadsheet is probably fine for bookkeeping. If you have more clients or lots of purchases and expenses, a simple accounting program will help a ton.