Teachers Pay Teachers Taxes - Info for TPT Sellers

Welcome TPT sellers and/or fellow tax-confused friends! It was income tax reality day for my little business today so I'm here to tell you a little bit about it before I forget it all! (That happens often these days!) It's a little LONG, but hopefully will give you some good information!

A few years back, when I was new to selling, I searched everywhere for tax advice without a whole lot of success. I was SUPER confused because I had not received any income statement from Teachers Pay Teachers and was attempting to do my own taxes. It was a nightmare. Notice this blog post title? It is very simple and to the point for a reason. When I was searching for more info related to a HOME OFFICE with my own taxes this year, I Googled these key words but I did not find much else to help me with tax info for small business owners like myself. Some of what I have to share with you are things I learned from doing some research over the years. I also found out some surprising NEW TIDBITS of information today during my own tax session so I want to share these with you too. Please be advised that I am NOT a tax expert by any means so when in doubt, ask a professional! Like most things I blog about, I am only writing from my personal experiences! :)

Today I met with my new tax preparer that I will definitely go back to every year. Because she is also a small business owner and has a home office, she was much more knowledgeable about specific deductions than some other folks I have hired in the past. When I only had personal taxes to do, I used Turbo Tax which was so easy. But the addition of a small business has complicated things beyond what I feel comfortable with. Her fee was very reasonable (around $150.00 for both returns- federal and state and included every possible necessary form for small business). It is well worth the money to know that my taxes are done correctly.

It didn't take too long to get my ducks in a row for tax season because I know what to anticipate and what to save. So many websites allow you to easily print summary statements for the whole year and that is exactly what I do.

You may be wondering what business write-offs there are for sellers. It's pretty simple really. What I have been told is that anything that is directly related to your business like ink, graphics purchases, font licenses, TPT annual fees, expenses for marketing your items, blog designs and all of that are deductible expenses. Some other things may be questionable... like deducting your phone if you only have a cell phone as a home phone. There are gray areas for everything of course.

All of  my paperwork was organized nicely as I lugged it all with me to the appointment in my snazzy tax tub. As ready as I thought I was, I did not plan for everything. I also know that it is not necessary to drag every piece of paper along but I do just in case. Here's what she asked to see for both personal and business taxes:

• W2
• the tax return from the previous year
• totals for itemization such as union dues
• charitable donations amount to church, Goodwill, etc. (estimated value at 50 dollars per bag of clothing)
• totals for business expenses by category (supplies, marketing, tools, and depreciable items like furniture, cameras, technology, software...) 
• mortgage interest
• banking interest
• home tax info
• total for earned income (business)
• total amount only for utility expenses (gas, internet, electric, phone...) not every receipt needed
• investment info 

I made myself a chart for our appointment which was helpful, but I did NOT need to list TPT, Etsy, ThistleGirl Graphics and all of that separately. They all fit under tools for my tax purposes. 

It looks something like this only the finished list was MANY more pages! 

I will edit it for next year to include broader categories and totals for supplies, advertising, tools, utilities and so on.

 Though I have learned I can travel light, you bet I am saving every piece of documentation, and all receipts, in my files at home!

Here's what I needed to provide that I did not have ready on the chart...

• square footage of the room I use as home office (must be exclusively used for that purpose)
• estimated percentage of use of the internet service as I am not the only person living in the household
• percent of usage for the cell phone- related to business use 
• total expenses for any home repairs- inside or outside done in the last year ( I really wish I had known this because I spent way more than what I reported today and remembered only after I got home)
• amount spent on exterior maintenance of the home (landscaping, snow removal...)

There are probably a few others that will come to me later! Claiming a home office and all of its related expenses is a bit of a tax break but HERE'S THE KICKER! I am planning to move in the near future. Now that I have claimed a home office on taxes, I will be required to pay an additional tax on that home office when I sell my house...interesting. Still it was wiser to claim it than not to.

Of course. this post can't possibly be all-inclusive. If there is something I forgot to mention or if you have any other suggestions for more items to add to claiming a home office specifically, please feel free to leave a note in the comments section below! 

Every seller's situation will be different than mine, but hopefully you have a better starting point or have gotten a few new tips along the way here today! The best advice is to be as detailed and precise with your business as you are with every resource you create. At tax time, you will be glad you did! Saving all of your business paperwork and receipts in a file, binder or tub is very helpful. Knowing what you can or cannot deduct and bringing the proper documentation with you is important so you can have a quick and hopefully painless meeting with your tax preparer or accountant.

All in all, there was not too much damage to the pocketbook today. I did OWE a little this year, despite taking advantage of every possible available deduction! I'm glad I always plan ahead and keep money aside for taxes on my extra income.

Now that you have some good information to guide you as a TPT seller, you may also want to get a cute tax tub going like I did.

  

:)

Tips for TPT Sellers: Using Shape Fill in PowerPoint

I love when I discover how to do something new when it comes to technology! Most of what I know, I have learned simply by trial and error or I found myself a great tutorial! I am here to share a little trick I just stumbled upon by playing around with digital backgrounds.

We teachers love labels of all shapes and sizes for our classrooms. You can easily make your own! I am adding mini-labels to a new polka dot classroom decor set. The problem is that when I filled the tiny square the way I did the larger decor pieces, the dots on the background paper were too small and spaced too far apart to be seen around the cute green frame by Ashley Hughes. It's the case of the disappearing dots! It's not much of a polka dot set with only four semicircles in the frame as you can see. Maybe this has happened to you before as well.

So what do I do?  Determined to have my dots, I begin trying to fix it any way I can but without much luck other than turning my dots into lovely ovals. Dots and chevrons are probably the two hardest patterns to work with because they both get easily distorted, especially in rectangles.

I will take you through the steps to get from my before to my after when working with dots!

This can also be applied to many, but not all digital papers that you plan to use to fill a shape.

First, insert your shape in PowerPoint as you normally would. 

For mostly white backgrounds, I like to add a faint cut line around the shape.

Then, follow these steps below to fill the shape with your favorite digital background papers.

** It's been my experience that not all papers are created equally. Some tile more nicely than others inside a shape. Watch out for visible seams. If you have them, you'll want to choose a different paper.**

The most important step here is to be sure to check tile picture as a texture to avoid the stretch with patterns! When I did this last step, I now have the large dots from the pretty paper I chose (which is really just a .png image) inside my shape. Normally I would stop there. 

Here is the shrinking part of the tutorial:

Find where it says Scale X and Scale Y.

 I've seen them there every time, but completely ignored them for years because I had no clue what they were for!

(It's OK. You can say "duh" if you already knew this. I have many "duh" moments!) 

So I just started fiddling around with it and discovered the shrinky dink effect!

See how the default is set to 100% in the picture above? Use the down arrows or type in a value less than 100. I gradually worked my way down until I adjusted the dots to be the size I wanted them to be.

My dots stayed nice and round when I changed both X and Y to the same value. 47 was my magic number. 

For some backgrounds you may also find that adjusting the alignment will place your patterns where they may be better seen and not be hidden behind any clip art or frame.

Save Time!

Once you have shape fill in general and these tricks mastered, it's super easy to just click on every shape on your page to select them all at once, rather than filling each shape individually. 

Follow the same series of steps to add your backgrounds quickly!

Here is the finished product~ teeny tiny dots on teeny tiny labels!

Hope you learned a little something here! 

If you are a PowerPoint user, try it out and let me know how it works for you! Maybe you'll discover something to add here! For those of you just getting started with using PowerPoint, you can find many great beginner tutorials out there if you search!