Home office legal in your neighborhood? Surely you jest!

If you want to make the day of the bureaucrats of your local municipality just walk in and ask permission . . . permission for what? It doesn’t matter you’ll provide a weeks worth of chuckles in the break room of city hall You’ll provide a weeks worth of chuckles in the break room of city hallas they recall to their buddies how creativity they said no to whatever you are contemplating.

I have a favorite saying that goes something like, it is better to ask for forgiveness, than it is for permission. I cannot recall ever seeing a news story about someone who went to jail because they violated the zoning ordinances starting a home based business.

This morning I had a mentoring call with one of my students in the Telecommuting - Working from Home class. As part of the discussion she indicated that she was about to go to her local City Hall to inquire as a relates to as zoning ordinances and permits that would be necessary to operate a medical billing business from home.

I had all I could do to keep from driving over and tying her to her chair. You know what the result of that visit is going to be before you even leave from home. They will find 4,000 different rules and regulations which prohibit you from breathing inside your home, yet alone run a home based business. Why run the risk of being fingered?

Don’t ask . . . don’t tell is what I do. As long as you’re not cooking camel hides or building rocket fuel the engines in your garage I’d suggest you proceed quietly to conduct your home based business without asking for permission.

The critical key is to be a good neighbor, and watch the traffic coming going from your home. An occasional FedEx truck once a day is not going to do you in, but if you’ve got cars parked in front of neighbors driveways, customers coming and going at all hours of the day there’s a very good chance that your business is going to be halted whether or not it’s legal.

The politicians will run for cover whenever they encounter the outcry from home based workers in the community. There’s safety in numbers, I saw one estimate of a community where one out of five residential homes had a business being operated within it. There are twenty million of us who operate home based businesses.

You might recall OSHA’s 2001 attempt to regulate home based businesses by making the ergonomics of keyboarding regulations apply to home based businesses. The phone lines in Washington lit up in an instant and every single politician got volumes of abuse from every corner of their jurisdiction. The tmillions of constituents in the marketplace wanted nothing to do with government regulating home based businesses. OSHA backed off in 48 hours.

This is a political hot potato and believe me, they do not want the wrath out of the home based business entrepreneurs in their jurisdictions. We are many, well armed financially and very politically savvy.

• Increase your productivity, get away from your desk,

• Fictitious business name, assumed name, DBA,

• Startup writeoffs, licensing and filing,

• A Guide to Starting Your Business,

• How to write off your startup costs,

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