{"id":2263,"date":"2019-03-06T13:03:25","date_gmt":"2019-03-06T18:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/?p=2263"},"modified":"2019-03-06T13:03:41","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T18:03:41","slug":"paying-for-your-side-gig-how-to-file-freelance-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/paying-for-your-side-gig-how-to-file-freelance-taxes\/","title":{"rendered":"Paying for Your Side Gig: How to File Freelance Taxes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Did you know that in 2016 there were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/chart\/10981\/freelancers-in-america\/\">55 million people<\/a> in the United States that were freelancers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s no wonder that with the number of freelancers nowadays self-employment taxes are an important subject people are trying to understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Being your own boss is great, but it also means paying your own taxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you work as a freelancer, check out this guide to learn how to file freelance taxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Paying for Your Side Gig: How to File Freelance Taxes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Freelancers are considered self-employed, which means freelance taxes have to be filed as a business owner. In other words, this also means you&#8217;re also considered a .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first step is to gather all of your 100-MISC forms from each of your clients. These forms are what you receive as a freelancer vs a W-2 from an employer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Self-Employment Tax<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>If you earn <a href=\"https:\/\/www.freelancetaxation.com\/the-minimum-freelancers-need-to-earn-in-order-to-have-to-file-income-taxes\">$400 or more<\/a> from freelance work that you do, the self-employment tax rate has to be paid. At a regular job,&nbsp;Social Security and Medicare taxes are automatically held, but when doing freelance work, these two taxes are why self-employment&nbsp;taxes exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The IRS considers a freelancer an employee and an employer, which is why they expect the whole amount of Social Security and Medicare taxes are taken out via the self-employment tax. The self-employment tax is in addition to the regular income tax rate that has to be paid to the IRS too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Business Expenses<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Since you are now considered self-employed, this means there are expenses that you can claim on your taxes as tax deductions. Tax deductions are&nbsp;in place to&nbsp;keep track of&nbsp;how much&nbsp;of the pay wasn&#8217;t used to cover business expenses. The amount left after deducting business expenses from the total pay for the year is the amount the IRS can tax you on.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These deductions normally include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Business-related&nbsp;food expense<\/li><li>Office expenses<\/li><li>Equipment and supplies<\/li><li>Hotel Stays&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li><li>Materials<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The guideline with business expenses for freelance work is that the expenses have to be ordinary and necessary.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.freeagent.com\/guides\/making-tax-digital\/\">Making Tax Digital<\/a> is great to use to keep track of expenses if you&#8217;re feeling overwhelmed with the different categories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Travel Deductions<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>When you travel to a job for the work you do as a freelancer, that&#8217;s a business expense that can be deducted. If you&#8217;re commuting&nbsp;to an office, then the costs of traveling can&#8217;t be deducted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Home Office<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have a dedicated office space in your home exclusively for your freelance work, you can apply certain&nbsp;deductions. You can write off rent, mortgage, and utility portions of your home for the area you use as a home office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Meals<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have a meal with a client for business, you&#8217;re able to write off the bill at a 50% rate. The key to business meal expenses is that you have to have proof those meals and expenses were necessary for the development of your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Welcome to the Self Employed World<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that you have learned about freelance taxes and that you are no longer considered an employee but an employer too welcome to the self-employed world. Getting your taxes done won&#8217;t be overwhelming or a headache as long as you&#8217;re organized and know what to expect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Are you curious about improving your newfound business?  our business tips blog for a wealth of information you can learn from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Did you know that in 2016 there were 55 million people in the United States that were freelancers? It&#8217;s no wonder that with the number of freelancers nowadays self-employment taxes are an important subject people are trying to understand. Being your own boss is great, but it also means paying your own taxes. If you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2263"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2265,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2263\/revisions\/2265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.atyourbusiness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}