Nothing radicalizes you like seeing all your freelancer friends have to pay 30% taxes on their poverty wages. Everyone is out of work, under employed, underpaid if at all. There are no savings and no safety nets. Groceries cost $80 every trip. It feels like I'm bleeding to death.
Im not joking when i say that the first time i was told about independent employment taxes (which was no earlier than when i had to PAY THEM because i had an unusually successful redbubble print) it scared me off making money with my art for 10 years. I just couldnt see how it could ever be worth it
And even now when i see how it COULD be worth it, like..... the reality is still so depressing to watch. I'm making no money still but watching it happen to people i look up to and feel deserve even better than i ever did. Getting crushed year after year by an industry that hates us
I'm freelancer, husband isn't, and we're lucky enough that he makes a decent enough income that my work is simply "extra," but feel fully radicalized every time I file our taxes and see we pay 100 times as much in federal taxes (not including Medicare & Social Security) as Donald Trump's $750/year
Yep... this is exactly how I wound up in debt to the IRS for several years. I was a freelancer during all my years in games journalism and was never making enough to both pay my taxes and feed my family. I only ever managed to catch up after I switched to a full time job outside of the industry.
I had a year where I made a total of $850. I had no other freelance work. I had to replace my tablet in the middle of it, so my net was 750. I had to pay 120 in taxes. On one job.
It doesn't matter how poor you are. They still want that pound of flesh.
I have a relatively successful fun hobby that I do when I'm not working and have to actively tell people to stop asking me to start a Patreon or ko-fi or whatever, because I'd rather not make any money at all on it than have to figure out the taxes. I had one guy offer to mail me cash. Ridiculous.
Yeah my contracting income for the *year* was around $15k and the taxes on that were $2.5k.
Oh and the client still hasn’t paid for the last three weeks of work that ended last October.
Taxing of freelancers really is deliberate in how they're forcing people to obey to corporate interests, or else they'll get severely punished for it. Considering how bad the economy is right now, serious change needs to be made about these freelancer taxes. They're intentionally unfair.
I really cannot recommend strongly enough that the people in this thread hire an accountant who specializes in artists. There’s no getting around the 15.3% you have to pay for social security and Medicare but they can help you identify ways to reduce your income tax burden. They’re worth every penny
I do have one, but they cost me $350 a year, and cannot prevent me from owing thousands. It helps to have someone in my corner, but they can't change the laws for me
Treehouse Taxes based in NY, I've had a great experience with them for the last couple years and I'm sad I moved and won't be able to use them moving forward
The american dream is losing your health for corporate profits, and giving the pennies they pay you to the landlord.
Than death so the younger crowd can repeat.
Double frustrating that because we are not employing people no programs are aimed toward us for accounting or organizing our shit. We aren’t a profitable target even!
Right like, I see people being like well you're paying for social and health insurance when you have a job anyway. But like. There is built-in assistance that comes with a job that deducts taxes in that way. I am also not being paid like someone who is working as long hours as I do lmao.
My AGI was below the threshold for even having to file, but I had to file because I’m freelance/self-employed. Even after literally thousands of dollars in expenses and deductions I still owed over a grand
But if those were employment wages, it would be $0
Madness.
That shit happens because the government has capitalist lobbyists who want to punish all independent workers. If going independent proved to be a painless process, they wouldn't have nearly as much of a stranglehold on labor.
Remind me again why, as much as I'd like to, can't settle on making and selling art alone to make ends meet (I'm better known locally as an UX consultant and practitioner, and although I'd rather let go of it after 20+ years, that's still where my livable wages come from) 🥲
#Bidenomics, baby. But the economy is booming, they tell you. Booming for whom? Not for me. To keep taxes low for the rich, they eliminated all the deductions for the poor. Democrats at work.
Not that republicans are any better.
