[Rathji]

For the last year, I have been fixing computers, doing data recovery etc on the side. Mostly for friends and family (and their friends). Normally between $50 and $100 a job and never more than about one a month. I never really put any thought into it as an actual business though.

Now that my class load is reducing and I am looking towards being out of school in 8 months, I have been trying to find some small contracts (IT consulting) and have landed a small company that is giving me some initial work + a recurring support contract. The scope of the job isn't large ( < 30 hours roughly) but it has made me realize that I need to be thinking of this as a real business. As such, I need to be claiming this income on my taxes and dealing with things like GST etc.

My question is what are the things I need to be thinking about here, from a financial record keeping perspecitve? Things like keeping reciepts, maybe a accounting software package? What about taxes? I have only ever dealt with the standard 1 or 2 T4 tax return, should I look into someone to do them for me or are they pretty straightforward? How much of my income should I be saving to deal with the taxman? 20-30%?

Any thoughts or hints would be greatly appreciated.