Can I Charge for Reiki?

I have been practicing Reiki for two months now, over 12 hands-on sessions completed, and have been asked by several, “what do you charge.” I am in California and do NOT have a business. Can I not charge unless I have an official business (LLC or S-Corp??)

Congratulations on offering sessions and getting ready to charge. Yes! This is exciting! And the truth is that once you start charging, you have a business.

A business does not need to be a formal entity filed with your state in order to be a business. An entity is the official name of a legally formed business, like an LLC (a Limited Liability Company), because it's separate from you...it's its own entity. This is what gives your personal assets legal protection. The filing fee (cost to establish a formal business, which is typically a single-member LLC for Reiki practitioners) in California is not high, but the annual fee, the amount you pay each year for an LLC, is quite high ($800!) especially compared to other states.

But with a sole proprietorship, you don't need to do anything, just collect and keep track of your money (and yes, have insurance, too), and then include the amount you earned on your tax return. The problem with this is that you and your business are one and your business is not a separate entity, so there's no separation between your personal assets and your business.

There is so much to say about all of this, but yes, you can charge without being an LLC (an S-Corp, for those who don't know, is a kind of business that has different tax rules in which you're the employee, but this is not something that any new practitioner needs to worry about unless/until you earn enough for the tax changes to financially make sense for you).

My article on business types, DBA? LLC? OMG!, will really help. It clearly and simply explains it all: LLCs, sole propietorships, S-Corps, and etc. It's part of the free Reiki Biz Kit. I encourage you to check it out as well as these episodes of the Build Your Reiki Business podcast on LLCs and DBAs.