99U: Does the thought of doing your taxes make you want to cry? For many in the design industry, including myself, the answer is a resounding yes. But a solid grasp of figures and finances is the equivalent to building the strong foundation to a building. If you can shore up the money part of your business, you can spend more time doing what you really love—the creative part of the job.
2 comments:
I wish they taught taxes and general finances to people. I remember in high school taking a business math class that taught me stuff like taxes and balancing a checkbook, albeit from the business side. This article doesn’t help. It’s broad and overly generalized instead of specific to those of use who freelance in the performing arts. Conferences that offer training like USITT can be written off. Work in lighting and purchase your own gels? You can write those off as well. What if you want to incorporate as an LLC versus an independent contractor? You are still a freelancer but either of those designations change things. There is very little information that this article presented. I don’t need basic tax advice, I want to know what changes occured in the US tax code that affect what I can and cannot claim on my taxes as a write off. That is where this article falls short. It barely scratched the surface and honestly if you think that writing off a three week trip for two days of work, well you’re special and I don’t want to be in your office when the IRS calls you in for an audit.
This is a really useful article to get some intro into filing taxes as a freelancer. It doesn’t get deep into it, but it does talk about the myths that you hear being thrown around. My favorite is if the 1099 doesn’t come you don’t have to pay taxes on the income. It’s one of those things you really want to be true because people want things to be easy and don’t want to have to do extra work. But you gotta find the information yourself, call the employer ect. It’s one of those things that even though we had a class talking about taxes for freelancing and not freelancing that covered a lot of these topics, we still haven't actually talked about how to file exactly or how to instill good practices to track receipts and income. But I guess it’s one of those things you just have to learn by doing. And like the last myth says, if you get an audit it doesn’t mean you're in real trouble- if you mess up just tell them and try to bring as much as you can in.
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