About sole proprietorships, DBAs, EINs, and business names.

I'm going to do some work for a friend's business. I will paid as a contractor and will be filing for an EIN as a sole proprietor. When applying for the EIN there is a place to add a business name, my friend says that you can just write anything in there and have that name associated with the EIN (Which she prefers due to some trouble she had with her contractors being considered employees because their EINs were associated with the name, not a business name). However, I'm not convinced that I can associate a business name with my EIN without getting a DBA (and getting a DBA seems overkill for a couple hours per work working for a friend's business).



Here are the facts:

I want an EIN to protect my SS#.

My friend wants my EIN to be associated to a business name to protect her from problems she had in the past.

I'll be working only a few hours per week as an independent consultant.

Checks will be made payable directly to me, and I will file a schedule C on my taxes and pay social security and self employment and all that when I file my annual taxes.

I don't intend to do other consulting work for anyone else at this time.



I think that about sums it up, can anyone shed some light on this for me?

via Small-Business-Forum.net http://www.small-business-forum.net/accounting-taxes/10495-about-sole-proprietorships-dbas-eins-business-names.html