Steve Kramer

So glad you found the answer! I was going to say that it was really something that needed to be answered by the department itself.

Did you see anywhere that indicates that they would not be allowed? I would think they’d be fine to use, as long as the resulting product is nonperishable.

Elizabeth, the last lesson in my free mini course covers some of this. But basically, yes you need to pay income taxes at tax time. No matter how much you make, you have to report it as income. I personally use TurboTax to file my taxes, but most tax software will be able to handle business income.

The rules get fuzzy when it comes to things with alcohol and items with health benefits. It would probably be best to directly contact the health dept about this.

Hi Pam, I did a poor job promoting the forums on this site. I’m currently making technical changes that should improve that over time, and make people more aware of them.

To answer this question, probably the best option is to use the Farm Direct Bill, but that requires someone to grow the produce themselves.

Otherwise, I’m not sure if…[Read more]

Corinne, see here to determine if you need insurance: https://forrager.com/faq/#insurance
If you do need it, get FLIP insurance, which is $300/year.

You cannot ship products in CA. I’m actually working on a bill this year to try to allow in-state shipping.

It depends on what state you live in. 18 states allow in-state shipping. Most of the people selling homemade food on Etsy are doing so illegally.

I don’t believe that extracts are allowed, but you can contact the health dept to check. If they were allowed, you could only sell them at farmers markets.

Yes, you should always be able to buy commercially-produced ingredients and use them in your products.

Adding to what Cottage Oven said, I only add items that I can confirm. If I can’t confirm whether an item is allowed or prohibited, I don’t add it to either list. I list the source info in the Resources section of the page.

If a state’s law specifically says that it only allows baked goods, then I can confirm that anything non-baked is prohibited.

If you use a free accounting software like Wave Accounting, you can just use the default categories they have. But in general, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. When you add expenses, you can add new categories at that point if your existing categories don’t fit.