David Crabill
@david
active 4 days, 9 hours agoForum Replies Created
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Yup, income tax too.
That is correct… homemade food sales may be done at farmers markets, but obviously that is not conducive to a custom cake business. Technically, if you found a farmers market that was open most days, you could have your buyers pick up their custom cakes from there.
Other than that, the only legal workaround would be to try to initiate an amendment to the cottage food law in the next legislative session. If you are interested in jump-starting that, I can connect you with an organization that would probably be willing to help.
The other alternative would simply be to run your business illegally. There are probably already a lot of people in your area in Nebraska doing this, and I’m not sure if the government there cares much.
Wow, this is such a difficult question to answer. There is definitely no comprehensive list online nationwide… but it is my hope that someday this site will be able to give a good indication for how many CFOs there are.
One reason that this is a difficult number to calculate is because out of the 45 states (including DC) that allow some form of home food sales, only 18 require a license or registration from the health department for their business. Also, even in states with cottage food laws, illegal home food businesses are extremely common and probably consist of the majority of cottage food operations.
Of the states that require registration, Arizona is the only state I know of that publishes all of their CFOs in one place. I haven’t manually counted that list, but it includes at least 2,500 operations.
There are also some counties in California that publish a list of CFOs, with the numbers below being approximations:
Los Angeles (Class A / Class B): 250
Orange County: 166
Sacramento: 80
San Bernardino: 75
Santa Barbara: 180
Even though there are 58 counties in CA, some of them have very few CFOs, and a few may still not have a CFO registered yet, so the above counties are not necessarily indicative of the state as a whole.So it is really hard to pin down a number, but I would say that if you’re only counting legal operations existing under the cottage food laws, there are at least tens of thousands out there. If you’re including illegal operations too, probably at least 100,000 exist.
Do you live in Pennsylvania?
You are definitely responsible for self-employment tax, and I’m not sure what you’re referring to with “incr take”.
Homemade juices are not covered under CA’s law, and therefore, there is currently no way to legally sell homemade juices.
However, CA is in the process of reviewing submissions for adding foods to the allowed list. You can submit a request using the links below until January 31st. Keep in mind that the health dept will only approve items that don’t require refrigeration, and this is probably only limited to berry and rhubarb juices.
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/Documents/fdbCFOaddfoodrequest.pdf
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/Documents/fdbCFOapplication.pdfI could explain what non-PHF means, but that is only applicable to baked goods or confections. Basically, none of the items you’re describing, like jams or sauces, are allowed in Arizona under the cottage food law. That means that to legally sell your products, they would need to be produced in a commercial kitchen.
Thanks for posting this Cristina… I really hope you can help improve things. Let me know if I can help in any way… for instance, I can provide examples of how other states have added a line to their law to prevent counties from disallowing CFOs.
Edward, thanks for bringing this up, as this is something that the site wasn’t really clear about. The law only allows “farm stands”, so yours would need to be on a farm. I have updated Texas’ page to make this more clear.
No, you can’t use vegetables or cheeses in any of your products.
