The Numerical Aspects of Art: A Day of Working on Taxes!
Working as an artist is not all fun and games. Much as I would like to spend all my time just creating things, fact of the matter is that — as somewhat of a "production artist" — I have to also do a lot of bookkeeping.
And that was precisely what I found myself doing today.
Here in the USA, our personal income tax reports are usually due on April 15th but if you file for an "extension" (because you're lazy and disorganized as I am and you need more time which I invariably always do) you have until October 15th to get it finished instead.
With that deadline looming ever closer, I decided that today would be a good day to put the finishing touches on getting the income tax return finished.
In some ways, this basically feels like an exercise in futility, at least from the perspective that you spend an awful lot of time gathering together receipts and numbers, and then adding it all up merely to formally and officially prove that you're miserably unsuccessful at making money!
And yet? If you don't do this, you end up (indirectly) proving to yourself that you can be even more miserable at making money when the government revenoors come and decide they want to look at your recordkeeping to see why money flows in and out of your bank account while you're claiming that you don't have any money.
I absolutely understand that this is part of the system we live in, and I so I engage in this numerical journey every year, albeit reluctantly, and at the end of it I end up having the cold hard facts about working creatively, but it rarely makes me feel very good about myself.
Of course, painting mandalas on rocks is only part of what I do for a living so doing our income tax return today wasn't just about painting on stones.
However, Alchemy Stones has its own "Schedule C" which is sort of a business income statement for just this segment of what I do for a living.
Whereas 2022 was definitely an improvement over 2021 it was still nothing to write home about. Thanks to the fact that we were finally able to start participating in outside events again towards the second half of 2022, at least we were able to bring sales for the year up to somewhat over $3,000. It's not much, but it's certainly better than the paltry $1,000 from the year before!
For the first time since starting to treat Alchemy Stones as a business, I also went to the trouble of claiming a "home office deduction" as an expense because everything helps. It's a rather laborious process because my workspace is larger than the maximum allowed for the "simplified application," but in the end it saves a few dollars here and there.
At the end of it all, I was (sadly) able to discover that you can still owe $1,668 worth of tax, even if you are essentially dirt poor. I always find that outcome rather fascinating against the backdrop that people in the USA so often are going on and on about how high taxes in Europe are.
What's even more ironic about it is the fact that this tax all represents what's known as "self-employment tax..." which basically goes towards our Social Security (State Pension) which ultimately I'm unlikely to ever be able to collect.
It's a strange world in which we live!
So with that out of the way, it's time to get back to the process of getting the rest of my inventory listed online, and making new things for the final shows of the year which are coming up before the holidays.
All in all, I have to admit that I'm grateful that we once again have these outside shows and festivals available to do, because without those it truly wouldn't be worth my while to do any of all this except purely as a hobby... maybe I'd just end up painting stones and throwing them back in the ocean when I was done!
Feel free to leave a comment, if you feel so inspired... engagement is part of what makes Hive such a cool venue!
If you enjoy painted rocks, do check out The Hive Rocks Project and help spread the word about Hive, while also being creative!
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2023.10.05 AS-TXT-175/143
Wow. I really like your art.
And as you mentioned..the part that is not always the fun part ... Taxes. Still you can enjoy and relaxed with your art.