Elbows Music Blog Community

jason@indieshuffle

Anyone else filing taxes for their website? I managed to write off a huge chunk of money, which gets detracted from personal income. Whooopie! :-)
Expenses included:
--Staff
--Developer
--A new computer
--New headphones
--Domain
--Hosting
--Business registration expenses
I get a feeling anyone can do this, even if they're only earning revenue from MOG. Really simple!

Either way, I'm pretty stoked.

x4a

Happy Valentines Day

TheNJUnderground

Nice. Have any tips on what you did exactly? I'm probably just going to be using Turbo Tax as filing my return is usually pretty simple..

jason@indieshuffle

Yeah, I used Turbotax as well. I think the primary thing you'll need is an EIN for your business. Once you do that, everything's super easy to fill out, though you may want to Google the best way to expense domain and hosting -- I forget what I chose, but it wasn't entirely straightforward. Probably in "Misc."

I imagine you can also write off the expenses without having a registered company, but claiming that you have a personal business. Not sure how that ends up working out.

Sean R

I'm curious about this. How does the blog work as a business?

x4a

For some very odd reason, this initial discussion made me think of this:

Recent official counts now show more than 1.5 million people are living on U.S. streets or in shelters. Some analysts place the number of homeless Americans at 3.5 million, with 1.4 million being children.

The city of San Francisco, California, considered the homelessness capital of the United States has an estimated homeless population of 7,000-10,000 people.

Last year, 3.2 million foreclosures were filed across the nation, forcing a majority of homeowners to live in their cars or bunking with relatives before giving up and living in shelters, sleeping under bridges and in makeshift camps in the woods.

Unemployment levels rose to 2.49 million by the end of last year, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The ONS revealed that the jobless figure rose by 44,000 in the three months to December 2010.

But hey, it's a very odd "tangential" thought from a very fucked up old guy.

Anyways, Google is skyrocketing with Android (amongst many other things) and indieshuffle.com has knocked down 4 million pageviews in 18 months, has a staff of 30 and an editor-in-chief on the payroll...

God Bless America

jason@indieshuffle

Ain't life crazy! Count my blessings to be working for Google, but having the website actually helped me get the job.

Sean, if you're attempting to make money legally, you've basically got a business going. Blogs typically make money through advertising. Seeing as that you've got to pay taxes on that advertising, you may as well start pointing out how much you lost in your effort to get value from that advertising (domain, web hosting, cost-of-entry to shows you reviewed but weren't on press list for, transport to shows, etc. You can also claim "office space" if you've got space in your house that is used 100% of the time for working on your blog).

Hopefully you can make that work!

x4a

biyl is ad free (thank god)

Sean R

Indeed we are, and even though some time ago I argued for a blog's right to have ads on this very message board, I hope to keep it that way indefinitely. That's a personal thing, and not a judgment on anyone who does have ads. Mark and I have discussed it several times and we're simply more comfortable keeping it the way it is.

The business question was just to satisfy my own curiosity. I guess ads might be the deciding factor there, as if you don't have them I'm not sure how you'd convince the IRS that a blog was a business. Unless you had a label or were actively promoting shows, then I can see how you could use the blog as an associated expense.

When I used to DJ regularly, I knew other DJs that would claim equipment, travel expenses, and the purchase of new CDs/Vinyl for their taxes.

x4a

@Sean - I should have written: "biyl is ad free" (thank god)

That comment was intended to respond to Jason's answer to your question "How does the blog work as a business?" , where he explained that by advertising on blogs to make money (a business), in which you pay taxes on that earned money, you are then entitled to a business operating expense tax write off.

The comment I made wasn't meant for you to feel the need to justify your decision to not run ads or to reiterate that you are not judging anyone who does run ads.

Also I interpreted your question to be "tongue in cheek", since you obviously already knew the answer.

Sean R

No, not tongue in cheek in the slightest. I was genuinely interested in the answer. If I could write off any of my expenses associated with the blog, I would probably do so. I spend a lot of money on server costs, music, etc. that comes right out of my rather shallow pockets. If I could pay Mark a salary of some kind, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I just wanted to make it clear that as far as ads are concerned, it's not my way or the highway. Plus, I do find it funny that I'm so anti-ads now and yet a few years ago I was so vehemently defending ads. In fact, I believe my argument for ads appeared as a footnote/reference in that girl's thesis on MP3 blogs a few years back. It's just funny how opinions change over time.

Tsuru

Not a fan of ads. If bitches gotta get paid, I gets that... So, there's no judging, to each their own. I block 'em personally, so it's a non-issue in my clickerin'. Though, I'm truly amazed that advertisers get a return on their investment from ads on websites.... but then again, maybe they aren't, maybe that's why they are getting more and more intrusive.

On a personal note, I think referrals make the most sense. You talk about music, show reader where that music is, get a small cut if they buy it. Seems fair and seems to promote the whole reason for bloggerin' in the first place, getting people to love new music. Ja know?

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