The SEP IRA: A Lovesong

We freelancers pay a lot of tax. We don’t just pay an income tax rate of anywhere from 0 to 39% on our freelance income – we also pay a flat 15.3% self-employment tax, no matter what our income bracket. Without tax planning, this can be a huge bite.

As artists and cultural workers, our freelancer tax strategy is generally to reduce the amount of our taxable self-employment income as much as legally possible. Tax planning is hard, because it’s about saving small bits in many places. There are few silver bullets. But the closest thing there is to a silver bullet is tax-sheltered retirement savings. Read full article

Rent Too Damn High? Deduct Your Home Studio.

One of the best tax breaks out there is the home office (or home studio) deduction. In tax terms, this essentially turns a portion of your nondeductible personal expenses (your home) into deductible business expenses (a workplace). A lot of people are confused about the rules, and some people are scared to take the deduction at all because they’ve heard that it can be a red flag to the IRS. As long as you are following the rules correctly, there is nothing wrong with taking the deduction. And it’s a big one! So here is some help.

First, when can you claim a home office/home studio?

You have to use it both exclusively and regularly.

Exclusive use means that the space is a dedicated workspace – no kids watching TV in there after hours, no guests staying there. There is no wiggle room on this part.  read full article

Tax Shelters for the Working Artist

What is a tax shelter?

The term “tax shelter” may conjure offshore accounts and shell companies, but in fact it is just a way of reducing your taxable income. Abusive tax shelters are illegal, but there are many legal ones that are actually set up by the US government to encourage Americans to set aside money for important things, like health care, child care, college, and retirement. I want to discuss a subset of these tax shelters, the Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) and the Healthcare Savings Accounts (HSAs) which came up in my previous piece on artist taxes. These accounts allow you to set aside up to a certain dollar amount tax-free to pay for qualified expenses. What you set aside gets subtracted from your taxable income, reducing your overall tax liability. Many of these programs have open enrollment periods in November, so just in time, here is a primer on this group of tax shelters for the working artist.

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