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Retirement and Future Success Hannah Cole Retirement and Future Success Hannah Cole

The Second Best Time is Now

You’re having drinks with a friend after an opening, and the topic turns to money. Life is expensive, the city is expensive, and the distant menace of retirement? Forget it. You turn back to your $14 cocktail and feel depressed.

But wait. Aren’t you the same person who is taking charge of her career? Aren’t you setting new goals, prioritizing your studio time, building your network, learning how to market yourself? You’re smart, and you’re tackling the other hard stuff. So why are you cheating yourself on the bigger picture? You can do this. No need to let the perfect be the enemy of the good here. There is an apt proverb about planting trees: The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is now.

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Startist Interview: Profit Motive, Marketing, and Tax Tips for Artists

Hannah talks with Laura Griffin and Nikki May of Startist Society about her roots as an artist and about establishing a profit motive for your art business. She chats about empowerment for artists and how she got started in accounting after some bad experiences she had as an artist.

What should you use to track expenses? How and what expenses are deductible? Can donated artwork be deducted? Do I need to collect sales tax?

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What’s in the $1.9 Trillion stimulus plan?

The American Rescue Plan, Biden’s $1.9 Stimulus Bill, will be an enormous boost to the US economy. Here’s a brief rundown of the items most likely to affect freelancers.

Stimulus payments:

New $1400 stimulus payments will go out per person on the return. This means that children and other dependents will get the full $1400 each, in addition to the taxpayers. Households with income under $150,000 (married filing jointly) and individuals with income under $75,000 will receive the full benefit. Households with income between

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Unemployment Tax Savings from the 2021 Stimulus Bill

President Biden recently signed the American Rescue Plan into law, and it has some very exciting provisions for people who collected unemployment during 2020. Hannah Cole of Sunlight Tax created the following short video to give you the latest information about how the new law will apply to unemployment income.

Hannah goes through specific information about unemployment taxes affected by this retroactive legislation. Hannah covers what you need to know, whether you have already filed your 2020 taxes or whether you have not filed yet.

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How Can Freelancers Benefit from New Tax Laws?

Hannah Cole had an interview with Matt Peiken of Blue Ridge Public Radio in North Carolina last week. She discussed the new tax laws and some of the areas where artists and other freelancers can benefit from them, like sick and family leave credits.

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