I think the confusion in this thread is that (in most of Western Europe) you automatically become a business (or even company) by the sole act of doing "business" (enterprise with the purpose of earning money), and once you cross some (small) threshold you have to register in some capacity. That can be a ~$20 bureaucratic act, compared to the ~$500 act of setting up a proper company. But of course at that point it varies wildly by country.

>It is like this in most western countries.

No it isn't... In Canada, you can happily accept money from people and just stick it in the "other income" box on your tax return, where it'll get income-taxed appropriately.

If you're trying to do business deductions or want to pay business taxes instead, yes you need a business. If you're trying to set up a physical location, yes you need a business license from your city. But if you don't care about the pennies and your work is digital there's absolutely no requirement.

> It is like this in most western countries.

This is not the case in the USA. There is no general federal legal requirement to register a business or obtain a business license in order to sell things. However, there are specific industries for which business licenses are required (at any of the federal, state and local levels) and forming an LLC might help personal assets if you are sued.

It's different here - for revenue from intellectual property rights in particular you do not need to be a business (you do need accounting & to submit an annual declaration to the revenue service; but you can do that as a regular person, there's no need to register a business).

Untrue, you can work with a freelancer tax card. You can't bill with VAT and deduct that from your costs as an entrepreneur if you do so, but you don't need to register anything in order to work as a freelancer.

In Australia you don’t need to set anything up. If annual turnover is over $75,000 you’ll need to register for GST which requires an ABN, and if you want a .com.au domain name you’ll need an ABN, and other entities you deal with may want you to have an ABN, but for the sorts of things in question here you won’t need an ABN.

In the US, AFAICT "sole proprietorship" is just the label for a natural person doing business; the extent of the registration can just be DBA ("doing business as") so that you can cash checks in a name other than you own.