It is well established that an author who is engaged in the business of writing for income should report royalty income on Schedule C, not Schedule E. But what about a retired author who no longer is writing but still receives royalties from previous work? Should retired authors report royalty income on Schedule C or E? Or, should a sole-proprietor S corporation that reports royalty income as corporation profits and author wages be used? Each reporting method has tax consequences and legal issues.
Tax tips for writers
With tax season approaching, I thought it would be a good opportunity to compile five posts from the archives containing tax saving strategies for writers. The first, LLC or S-Corporation? has also been one of our most popular posts, so it seems many are looking for advice as they begin to prepare for filing their taxes.
In the following five posts, Robert M. Pesce, a Partner at Marcum LLP, shares several strategies that writers can employ to save money on their business expenses:
Tax tips for authors: Taking the home office deduction
Many people believe that taking the home office deduction makes you automatically audited or that it drastically increases your chances of being audited. I don’t think it automatically causes you to be audited, but I do believe that it is something that auditors look at, and it does, I believe, increase the chance of you being audited, albeit still a small chance.
Tax tips for authors: LLC or S-Corporation?
While the simplest way for a small business, a writer, to report their income and related expenses is on Schedule C of their personal tax return as a sole proprietor, the two most popular entities for authors thinking about expanding beyond a sole proprietor are LLCs and S-Corporations.
Tax tips for authors: 3 Simple steps to organizing your business expenses
While it is understandable that most writers would prefer to concentrate their time on their writing, writing is a business…
Tax tips for authors: Understand foreign taxes, tax credit and tax certification
If you have sold your textbooks in foreign markets, foreign publishers may withhold foreign taxes at the source before the money is paid to your agent and before it is paid to you. If they are doing that, and you earned, for example, $10,000 in a foreign country, 10 percent, or $1,000, will have been withheld from your payment. Your agent would have received $9,000, and withheld his 15 percent commission on the $10,000 you actually earned. So you would end up getting about $7,500.