American Tax Time

[Kayke]

This is a really boring-adult topic, but it's my first year doing freelance taxes (because it's my first year making enough money to HAVE to do my freelance taxes)

Originally I was going to use Turbo Tax which I've used in previous years, but I felt like they were charging way too much to file my freelance art taxes and they wanted even MORE money to let me file expenses for my illustration work. I was really annoyed about it because I went through the trouble of making a spread sheet of my expenses and everything... so I did some research.

I ended up filing with Credit Karma, doing both my day-job and freelance stuff and it saved me a few hundie. Not only did they process everything for free (Turbo Tax was asking for 100) they also managed to get me back more money because they let me add my business expenses.

So if anyone else is being slow with their taxes or are pissed off at Turbo Tax's constant fee bumps, I recommend Credit Karma.

I've also been inspired to keep more detailed records of all of my expenses for the current year so I don't have to scramble to find receipts like I did for 2016. I'm even counting stuff like meals at cons and gallery events.

Anyone else have any tax tips or want to vent about stuff?

[UzukiCheverie]

Canadian, so I've done my taxes through H&R Block. I think the most they take off is like, $40-$60, not as bad as TurboTax. Nothing crazy because I don't make that much money off my freelance work, buuuut it turns out I have money with my old art shop job from before I moved here for school, so that's a couple hundo's if I can get the reports from my employer there (it's a toss-up because it's a small local business).

In other news, I'm the only one at my Starbucks store who hasn't gotten my T4 yet so what the hell :)"""" I WANT MY MONEY

[Kayke]

That's so frustrating! Lucky for me our forms for my day-job came right to the store instead of going to our houses individually. I hope you get it soon and that you can track down the forms from your old job!

[J.Z.Castillo]

Wait! I can list crazy stuff for expenses??? Like traveling to the site of a freelance piece or the meals I take during that time and what not?? OH. MY. GOD. I am THE worst at budgeting and keeping track of my expenses! Granted I almost never declare my freelance jobs because it's all paid in cash so sssssshhhhh unless they are something ridiculous like in the high hundreds and above but I guess I'll start doing it now! This was a very informative little piece of scamming I found today hehehe

[Kayke]

@mrjonzap Yeah! You can count supplies, advertizine, webhosting, travel, hotel, and food. I ALMOST counted a dress I bought for an event, but I felt like that was pushing it lol

For this year, in an attempt to be super organized, I started a google docs spread sheet where I've been entering the date, the cost, and a description of each expense. Nothing too fancy, but now I won't have to comb through my credit statements and whatever.

[sarrowsmith10]

US Tax law states that if you make under a certain amount of money, and you still pay your sales tax as a business, you don't have to report your art revenue as income. I'm not sure what that amount is, and I'm no CPA, so you should probably look into it. If freelancing is your primary income, and you make over a certain amount of money you have to pay social security and medicare and a bunch of other crap. It's stupidly complicated. Thankfully I don't make very much at cons/freelancing, so it all works out. haha.

I use HR Block too, and when I get confused I use their little chat box function and talk to a rep. It's all included in the cost of filing.

[J.Z.Castillo]

This is great! Thanks for sharing! Here I go towards my new fiscal year with new determination to get more money for my laziness MUAHAHA

[revisionstudios]

Ooohhh I had some dumb tax trouble this year!! Completely my fault, too.

For context, I separate my personal freelance dealings from my comic/merchandise sales, so for the latter I have an LLC with a couple partners. None of us get paid a salary or anything from business, but we like to keep the comic money separate. Unfortunately I didn't do enough research on the subject and I filed my personal taxes BEFORE my business ones, thinking "Oh I don't have any income from it so it shouldn't affect things".

I was wrong. :[ My business partner was like, "Hey uh, hope this doesn't mess you up, but apparently we have to do the business taxes before we file our personal ones because it adds an additional form." Cue me pulling my hair out because I paid $100 for H&R Block and I'll probably have to pay them AGAIN to amend it and send it in. :[[[[[ AUGH I'M SO MAD AT MYSELF.

A general tax note though, I was really mad at the online tax services because they were never upfront about how much they were charging if you had more than a W-2, and only said "Yeah it's TOTALLY free... EXCEPT IF YOU WANT TO ADD ANYTHING EXTRA," once you've already filled out all your prior info and made an account and blagfbshjshsa waste of my time.

[HeSerpenty]

Omg....

I give a sincere thank you to you for reminding me that I still need to do my taxes.....

I have never made enough as a freelance at once for taxes to even matter (lolol).... but MY confusing situation for NEXT year will be that I have to do a 1099 (is that what it's even called? XD) form since I will technically be self employed as a live in caretaker.
Now I gotta put aside 20% of each paycheck cuz I'll have to pay taxes myself instead of have my job pay them FOR me throughout the year. BUUUUU! XDD. I happen to live in California so.... LOTS OF TAXES, yay! X__X

[Kayke]

@sarrowsmith10 Yeah I forget the exact number, I remember last year I went through the process of filling out all the paper work to be told I was under that number and didn't actually have to file hahah

@revisionstudios As far as I can tell the only service that doesn't hide fees is Credit Karma. Or at least I didn't find any hidden fees filing with them. Turbo Tax was the same thing where they said it was free but then as soon as I had some forms other than a W-2 they were like 'actually that's a hundred dollars thanks' :/

@HeSerpenty That sounds like the same deal as freelance. What I did was start a seperate account for the percentage I'd have to pay in taxes so I wouldn't accidently spend it on anything... because that was a distinct possibility for me lol