Deadline: Midnight Tonight by Diana Flegal

Deadlines. They blink like a late night neon convenience store light. Or annoyingly buzz like ones bedside pesky alarm, “it’s time to get up!”.

But the mother of them all is midnight APRIL 15^th.  

And if you are self employed and have not set aside your quarterly taxes- it is time to pay up.

If you have had a good year- your pay out is big. If you haven’t – well then it’s still painful.

As a writer, you need to think of your writing as a business. Track your expenses and know what you can deduct, and what your state requires as its percent of your back room sales. I know, I know. But we are to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is Gods.

Tonight at 9:00 PM author Aaron Gansky will be offering an online podcast titled: Death and Taxes. It might behoove you to listen in.

Me? I will be working on filing my extension, so I will more than likely have to listen to it once it is archived.  

Here is the link. Give Aaron a shout out for me, will ya?

Now where are those toll receipts…

 

 

 

Keep Better Records by Andy Scheer

“What about this receipt from Writer's Digest?” my wife said.

The weekend before Tax Day, I was scanning the spreadsheet of my writing income and expenses, trying to match the entries with the categories in Turbo Tax.

I thought I'd kept good records. On December 31, I'd even recorded the odometer reading for the car I'd driven to some writers conferences.

But as the April 15 clock ticked, I realized I'd missed some expenses, like my subscription to WD. And what happened, I wondered, to those receipts for meals en route to that conference?

Last year I moderated a webinar by tax consultant Gary A. Hensley – brother of writing instructor Dr. Dennis Hensley. The hour's investment saved me plenty.

If you're not familiar with Gary's website “taxsolutionsforwriters,” check it out. You'll find advice you can apply throughout the year.

Come next April 15, you'll be grateful – especially if you remember to keep good records.

Year-End Details by Andy Scheer

Relax. You still have a few hours to care for those remaining details for tax year 2013.

Depending on this year's writing income, you can still decide if you want to register and pay for a writing course or conference now – and take it as a deduction for this year – or postpone the purchase for a new tax year.

The past few days I've been reviewing my list of year-end items. I just took care of my biggest remaining task, buying the small business version of the tax software I use to calculate what I owe the government for my publishing-related income. And I just remembered that I need to include on my income-and-expense spreadsheet the cost for my subscription to a writing magazine.

This year I've had some help in preparing. In my work for the Christian Writers Guild, I moderated three webinars on business aspects of writing presented by tax expert Gary Hensley and freelancers Lin Johnson and Julie-Allyson (see http://www.christianwritersguild.com/store/webinars).

Each provided a few tips to help me keep my records and to take all the available tax deductions. As someone who attended several writers conferences, it's good to be sure what documentation I need to deduct travel expenses.

The rest of today, as I alternate between writing an article due next week and procrastinating, I hope to channel some of that procrastination time to cleaning my office, sorting through files, and preparing to start the new year.