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What the IRS Expects From Your Photography Business (And What Most Photographers Get Wrong)
Business & Finance

What the IRS Expects From Your Photography Business (And What Most Photographers Get Wrong)

Every January, my inbox fills up with panicked messages from photographers who just got their first big year behind them and have no idea what to do with it. They made real money. They booked real clients. And now they’re staring at a bank account that looks healthy but will soon take a serious hit because nobody told them how to prepare for it. I’ve been running my portrait studio in Miami for over a decade, and I still remember the first year I crossed $80,000 in revenue.

What Your Photography Business Owes the IRS (And How to Stop Being Surprised by It)
Business & Finance

What Your Photography Business Owes the IRS (And How to Stop Being Surprised by It)

My husband is an accountant. You’d think that would make me bulletproof when it comes to taxes. Instead, what it actually did was force me to confront some uncomfortable math I’d been avoiding for years. One evening he sat me down with my studio’s profit and loss statement and pointed out that my most profitable service wasn’t my signature portrait sessions. It was the add-on prints and albums I’d been half-heartedly upselling.

What Your Photography Business Owes the IRS (And How to Stop Being Surprised Every April)
Business & Finance

What Your Photography Business Owes the IRS (And How to Stop Being Surprised Every April)

Every January, I pull up my studio’s numbers and run the same calculation my accountant husband walked me through years ago: take my net profit, multiply it by 0.9235, then multiply that by 0.153. That’s my self-employment tax liability before I even touch federal income tax. If I hadn’t started doing this math quarterly, I would have written a check to the IRS every April that physically hurt. A lot of photographers I know are still writing that check.

What Your Photography Business Owes the IRS (And How to Keep More of What You Earn)
Business & Finance

What Your Photography Business Owes the IRS (And How to Keep More of What You Earn)

Every January, I pull up my accounting software and run the same report. Revenue, expenses, net profit, tax liability. I’ve been doing this for years, and I still find photographers in my workshops who have never once looked at that last number before April. They’re shocked when they owe $4,000 or $6,000 to the IRS with two weeks’ notice and nothing set aside to cover it. That’s not a tax problem.