What you owe when nobody withholds it for you. Self-employment tax, quarterly payments, 1099 forms, deductions, and the deadlines that matter.
Business meals come off at 50%. Travel — the flight, the hotel, the rental car — comes off in full, but only if the trip kept you away from home overnight. A sandwich you ate alone at your desk is worth nothing. The same sandwich eaten alone in a hotel three states away is worth…
Most of what you buy for freelance work costs less than $2,500, and there is a rule that lets you deduct anything under that line in the year you bought it. No spreading it across years, no extra form. Section 179 and bonus depreciation — the two elections everyone brings up — only start to…
The 2026 business mileage rate is 72.5 cents a mile for miles driven January 1 through June 30, and 76 cents a mile from July 1 through December 31. The IRS raised it in the middle of the year, which is rare enough that most rate tables online still show a single number. If you…
The simplified method is $5 per square foot of office, capped at 300 square feet, so $1,500 is the most it will ever give you. The actual method takes what your home costs to run for the year and hands you the business percentage of it, and if you use a whole room for work…
Two words decide every deduction: ordinary and necessary. Ordinary means people in your line of work commonly buy the thing. Necessary means it helps you do the work. Clear both and it comes off your income. Miss either and no receipt will save it. The test is two words There is no master list of…
A 1099-NEC comes from a client who paid you for work. A 1099-K comes from a payment platform that moved the money. When a client pays you through PayPal, both can report the same $5,000, and adding them together would double your income on paper. Report what you actually earned and keep records that prove…
Schedule C is one page with two halves. The top half is what came in. The bottom half is what went out. Subtract one from the other and you get line 31, your profit — and that single number is the only thing that ever leaves the page. The shape of the page Before any…
Four dates: April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 15 of the following year. Send 100% of last year’s total tax, split into four, and the IRS cannot penalize you no matter what you actually end up owing. Make that 110% if last year’s adjusted gross income was over $150,000. If you miss one,…
Set aside 25% to 30% of every payment you receive. On $80,000 of net profit that comes to about $22,000, and it covers the 15.3% self-employment tax the US charges anyone who works for themselves, plus federal income tax. Add 3% to 6% more if your state taxes income. Move it the day the money…