|
My opinion.
My tax advisor was helping me understand that I have a certifiable business as I make a profit. I have always been self-employed and partitioning my expenses is new but starting to be necessary.
The charity vs. value issue is moot as I have used my donations as advertising opportunities and the cost of a frame, stretcher bars, plaque and canvas to hang on a wall in a high profile location was much less than flyers on door handles and infinitely more useful.
BUT the initial question was about whether or not to COLLECT tax, which is above and beyond the stated cost.
When I did an outdoor show I had to buy two licenses - for city and state. The state license is for any sale of a product in a gallery, or hanging at my work or venue, or cards I make reproductions of, or giclees or inkjet prints. I can just sell them, and the state has a nifty little figure where I end up donating it out of the gross.
Collecting sales tax is a cool thing. The client pays it. PAYING sales tax is the point we seem fuzzy with. I am going with the service vs. product attitude. As most of my work in the art field lately has been freelance, as I once did in my youth, for realtors or brochure design etc, it is easy. It is taxed as my income. In those states where incomes and sales get really sticky it is a big issue. Having not sold much at all, the small sales at the show were covered in that little retroactive formula. I just gave them my gross, they decided how much it cost and I paid the difference as the taxes.
I am hoping to do more gallery SALES and that sort of thing, but as most of my work in portraits so far has been oddly, over the internet or out of state for friends or family, I think the powers that be are still of a mind that interstate internet commerce is not SALES taxable unless sold to the same state...anyone know about that one?
|