Question

Self Employed Upcoming Taxes

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
September 28, 2018
1 reply
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I am trying to prepare myself for the upcoming tax season next year. I've been working for others all my life and am finally self employed. I take care of 3 children as child care income since the beginning of the year. Can someone give me guidance as how to prepare to file my taxes for childcare. I am new at this and don't want to mess anything up. I usually go to Jackson Hewitt but I would like to try filing my own taxes. All help will be appreciated or if there is a guide that I can look at to help me prepare and file would be great too. Thanks in advance.

Carl11_2

For starters, do you have a copy of your filed 2017 tax return that includes all worksheets and everything? You will need it, I can assure you.

The first year of doing your taxes on your own can be a real bear, but worth it in the end. The important thing is to start early, as it appears you are attempting to do.

Also, as a first time "doing it myself" tax filer, I *HIGHLY* *HIGHLY* *HIGHLY* recommend that you *DO* *NOT* use the online version of TurboTax. Regardless of what others may say, I can tell you right now that for a first time user of TurboTax, the online version is *NOT* user friendly by any stretch of the imagination. You need to get the CD version of TurboTax Home & Business (since you were self-employed in 2018) and physically install it on your computer.

You can get the CD ***FOR 2017 TAXES ONLY*** at https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/cd-download/. So you don't want to buy it now. TurboTax 2018 will be released around December of 2018 at the earliest. May be later though, because of the massive changes in tax law for 2018. Now I have a few questions, as the information is necessary so we can help you prepare.

-When did you start your day care business?

-Do you provide these services in your primary residence? If yes;

- Do you own your residence? Or do you pay rent to live in your primary residence?

- Do you keep detailed records of all business income and expenses? (That's an absolute must)

- Do you have signed contracts with those you provide your daycare services for?

- Does the county you are located in require you to be licensed in order to provide daycare services? If so, are you licensed?

- Separate from the above, does your county require you to have a business license of some type? For example, in my county where I am self-employed, I am required to have what is referred to as an "Occupational license" in order to run my business out of my house.

- Assuming you own your house, your homeowner's insurance policy flat out does not cover you if you file a claim for things related to your business. So do you have a completely separate liability insurance policy for your daycare? The minimum recommended coverage for this is $1M and it generally cost less than $300 a year, depending on your physical location.