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

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)

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.