You are a business owner. Your taxes are a bit more complex than they were as an employee. Did you start your business in the past year? If so you may have start-up costs that can be deducted. These can include, but are not limited to: attorney fees for setting up an LLC; any fees your state required for starting a business; a consultant who advised you on starting your business; logo designer; webpage designer; fee for URL; web hosting. Your tax professional will go over these with you to make sure you maximize this deduction.
Gather all information about your income and expenses. Income is easy, this is all invoices paid, deposits for non-invoiced services. Your expenses are anything you spent money on in your business. Some expenses are handled differently from others, your tax pro will know how to handle each of them. Some expenses are: advertising; business cards; stationery; internet service; printer paper and ink; phone service; home office expense; education expense; self-employed health insurance; business insurance, etc. Gather all your receipts. Your tax professional will know which ones are deductible and include them in the appropriate manner on your Schedule C and tax return.
After your tax professional has taken all allowable deductions and netted them against your gross income, your total income or loss is used to determine the amount of self-employment tax is due. This amount and the net income or loss is included on your 1040 return, along with any other income and deductions for you and your family. If there is a loss there will be no self-employment tax due and the loss will be subtracted from your other income.
If you are part of an active duty military family there are possibly a few additional steps to preparing your tax return. The IRS requires that all income worldwide be reported. You should make sure your tax professional is qualified to prepare both military and self-employed returns.
Please contact me at thora@goodoservices.com or during tax season at thora.goudeaucox@tax.hrblock.com so I may help get the best, legal tax. result