Taxes for Humans (eBook)

Simplify Your Taxes and Change the World When You're Self-Employed

Hannah Cole (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
488 Seiten
Wiley (Verlag)
978-1-394-29838-9 (ISBN)

Infos

Easy-to-understand guide to taxes for artists, freelancers, and all self-employed individuals

Equal parts empathetic and practical, Taxes for Humans is a handbook for tackling the tax-season-scaries, written specifically for people who are self-employed. Provides essential tax education for those pushed to the back of the financial line in America, including women, queer people, and BIPOC folks, this book provides the practical tools people need to understand their taxes, conquer their fear of finances, bulk up on tax benefits, and end the tax season stronger, smarter, and more tax-savvy than ever-without sacrificing their sanity.

With accessibility in mind, this book is structured into an easy-to-follow framework:

• The Mindset: Address limiting beliefs and make the case for tax empowerment
• The Education: Start from the ground-level, without shame or jargon, and lay a foundation of tax knowledge
• The Organization: Build the systems that will get you organized and keep you organized
• The Level-up: Take up space by using next-level skills like planning and tax-smart accounts to grow your wealth (and power)
• The Fix: Mend a broken tax situation (audits, disappearing spouses, back-taxes, and escaping the tax-debt spiral)
• The Bigger Picture: Connect your personal wellbeing with the wellbeing of the communities you love

Taxes for Humans is an essential read for all freelancers, creatives, and self-employed people seeking to understand, take control of, and reduce stress surrounding their tax.

Hannah Cole is a professional multimedia artist, podcaster, and tax specialist who teaches creatives, activists, and the self-employed how to keep more of the money they earn. She hosts the Sunlight Tax podcast and is a frequent guest on other personal finance podcasts, including Stacking Benjamins and So Money.

Textauszug

CHAPTER ONE
MY STORY, AND YOUR MINDSET TO MAKE IT WORK

“So, how long are you going to do this art thing before you get a real job?” my dad's accountant asked me.

When those words landed, I realized that I was in enemy territory. My pulse started racing.

I'd just started my life as a professional painter. I was paying a CPA to do my taxes for the first time in my adult life. I wanted to learn about self-employment's minefield of tax responsibilities and set up some tax-smart savings, but I needed help.

Honestly, I had entered that room feeling cocky. I had just graduated my MFA painting program with the Dean's Award, a prestigious grant, two upcoming artist residencies, and a gallery that was courting me for representation.

This accountant saw none of that. To him, I was just a naive girl dabbling in something unimportant, lacking the maturity to learn about taxes and business and join the world of “people to take seriously.”

I was a weirdo from another world, and I was wasting his precious time.

My fellow misfit, I see you.

You picked up this book because you've got tax questions. And I'm going to answer them. But I'll do more than that. I want you to feel seen and respected for the unique work you do. The world becomes better when more people like us have thriving businesses.

As a creative person, a mission-driven person, a community-building person, you are the empathy muscle of our culture. You find new solutions to old problems and help people gain new perspectives. You bridge gaps between people, help foster understanding, and are visionary—showing others that a better world is possible. If you are from a historically marginalized group, you may experience problems and see solutions that others never noticed. Your voice has been missing, and it needs to be heard.

Many of us culture and care workers have felt alienated from the world of money, like I did with my dad's accountant. We don't see ourselves represented or respected. Our passion is seen as naive, and not as a gift. And we've been living on a shoestring for so long, we've started to think that having money might corrupt us. We've swallowed a message that tells us to play small.

Believing this hurts you. Your vision alone won't change the world. You need money.

WHY IS THIS BOOK DIFFERENT?

Well, because I'm an artist first. Not your dad's accountant.

And I've seen some shit as a woman, as a mother, as a creative, and, frankly, as a person without much money or power. Here are some examples: I was fired from a museum job for complaining that my pay was half that of my male colleagues, I've experienced pregnancy discrimination, and I had a gallerist cancel a once-in-a-lifetime studio visit when I asked for an extra 15 minutes because I was actively having a miscarriage.

I've been assumed to be financially incompetent because I'm an artist. The creative stereotype is harmful and untrue (you know it, right? The one that says you're a flaky creative and “bad with money?”). True, I care more about inspiring people than amassing money. But also, I'm not stupid. I know how fully capable you are, and if I can do it, you can too.

Your exact experiences are likely different, and yet you too may feel alienated in accounting spaces because your experience is so different from the accountant's. Maybe your perspective has been shaped by financial discrimination, being a different personality type, or having very different interests from people in accounting. Perhaps you have worked hard to become the expert you are, only to feel humiliated admitting you don't know much about taxes in front of a judgmental accountant. Many of us feel like a round peg in a square hole when we talk to financial professionals.

That's why I founded my company, Sunlight Tax. I went back to school for accounting and got my enrolled agent's license (aka a tax professional, licensed by the IRS). Sunlight, as you know, is warm and helps things grow. It's the antidote to shame and fear. And that's where you come in. To me, creative and care-based businesses, run by people who have been historically underrepresented, are the cure for what ails this world. Sunlight Tax is where weirdos like us get straightforward tax education that values who you are and what you do. All of the charts and resources in this book are available to you at www.sunlighttax.com/taxesforhumans.

To be clear, I come at this work from a place of imperfection, not superiority. I have had all the frustration, made all the mistakes, plus suffered the harsh judgment of money professionals (and sometimes my partner). And yet, I learned how to do it well, which is great—because if this misfit artist can do it, that means you can, too.

More than a quarter of all couples split up over money.1 My nastiest fights with my partner were prompted annually with the tax return that highlighted how low-paid my “high prestige” art career was. My disorganization did not help.

I never forgot that humiliating experience in my dad's accountant's office, and I'm here to make sure you feel seen and get the help you need.

Let's get to it.

WHY SHOULD YOU EVEN CARE ABOUT TAXES?

Taxes are our agreement as a society. They fuel our country—taxes build our social safety net, our roads, our schools, our military, our green energy initiatives, you name it. Taxes are the broccoli of democracy. You might prefer Jolly Ranchers, but if you base your whole diet on those, your democracy isn't going to function. Like it or hate it, we need taxes.

The tax code is built on incentives that encourage people to do things that are in the country's interest. We create incentives for things we value. This can change over time, and it varies quite a bit depending on who we elect. These incentives work well for people who know the law. But there is a disconnect when people don't know the law. Tax education would be very helpful for all US taxpayers.

I think taxes should be taught in high school, as part of civics.

In a capitalist society, taxes create a lot of incentives for businesses. What most freelancers don't realize are that your freelance work counts as a business and can access these incentives and that these incentives kick in quickly and are way more generous than you'd expect.

The tax code is built to give you a financial boost as you start a new business, even a tiny one. (Don't worry, I'll teach you about this in Chapter 3 and in Chapter 4.) Incentives like these are here, right now, for you.

I get it. We've been trained to have a knee-jerk feeling that taxes are burdensome. You've never really considered that the tax code does all kinds of cool things to put money in your pocket at key moments in your life, when you need it. But it does. Here are some examples: a bigger tax refund the year you start a business or have an unexpected loss in your business; tax savings when you set money aside for your retirement, your family's education, or healthcare; an ability to access cash in your retirement account without penalty when you buy your first home or when you're the victim of domestic violence; cash back when you've been hurt by a natural disaster; cash in your pocket when you are poor but working and supporting children. I can go on, but you get the idea.

This knee-jerk tax reaction is no accident. Most people want the rich to pay their fair tax share and pay back into the country that helped them build that wealth. If you're a billionaire, it's a bad look to want to cut taxes for billionaires, when it's self-interested and benefits only you and your friends with yachts. So you need a strategy to get middle-class people to not want you to pay taxes. How? The current strategy sows distrust in government so that people don't have faith in it and associate the word “burden” with “taxes.” It positions politicians who cut taxes as “relieving” people's burden, rather than seeing what they are really doing, which is taking money from the poor and middle-class and giving it to billionaires.

Taxes don't just take from you. They give back, too. Know this, because it helps you get everything they're intended to give you.

Hell, you can even organize and advocate for more. God knows the billionaires are doing this.

Taxes give us societal benefits we can't get on our own—think military protection, roads and bridges, educated neighbors, food safety, scientific research, natural disaster recovery, and so on. If we chose to, taxes could also provide universal healthcare, free vocational and university education, affordable childcare for working families, and public transportation that reduces carbon emissions. Other democracies have chosen these benefits already.

Did you know that the US tax code subsidizes your business expenses to create an incentive for you to make investments in growing your business—even for a company of one or a weird niche micro-business? It's true. Giving you a deduction for what you buy for your business isn't a given. It's a societal choice, to incentivize you to grow, because businesses that invest in themselves are more likely to succeed. They spend a lot of...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 17.11.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Beruf / Finanzen / Recht / Wirtschaft ► Geld / Bank / Börse
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management
• Schlagworte: 1099 taxes • artist taxes • Back taxes • entrepreneur taxes • freelance taxes • how to pay taxes • irs tax • quarterly taxes • tax accounts • Tax Benefits • Tax Education • Tax Guide • tax investing • tax organization • tax planning • tax season
• ISBN-10: 1-394-29838-2 / 1394298382
• ISBN-13: 978-1-394-29838-9 / 9781394298389