There's actually a specific IRS ruling that applies to your situation! It's called the "Administrative or Management Activities Test" from IRS Publication 587. Your home office qualifies as your principal place of business if you use it to conduct administrative or management activities AND you don't conduct these activities substantially at any other fixed location. Since you mentioned you do all your billing, scheduling, client calls, and paperwork at home, you're good! Even if you spend way more time at client sites doing the actual service work.

My CPA told me that traveling to client sites from your home office makes those drives tax deductible too! Since your home office is your principal place of business, the commute from home to your first client and from your last client back home counts as business travel, not commuting. Make sure you track those miles!

Has anyone noticed that FreeTaxUSA sometimes has issues with the 8606 form? Last year I had to manually enter some stuff because it wasn't calculating my basis correctly after a conversion.

This is a really common mistake! At $95k income, you're definitely above the deduction threshold if you're covered by a workplace retirement plan. The correct approach is: 1. Don't take the Traditional IRA deduction - you're not eligible 2. File Form 8606 to report your $3,200 as a non-deductible contribution 3. Report the conversion to Roth on your return The reason your tax software is behaving this way is because you can't do both - either it's a deductible contribution (which you're not eligible for) OR it's a non-deductible contribution that requires Form 8606. Since you converted immediately, there shouldn't be any taxable gain on the conversion itself. You'll get a 1099-R next year showing the distribution, but since you're properly reporting the non-deductible basis on Form 8606 this year, the conversion won't be taxable. Think of it this way: you put in post-tax money ($3,200), so when you convert that same post-tax money to Roth, there's no additional tax owed. The 8606 is crucial because it tells the IRS "hey, I already paid taxes on this money.

Has anyone used TurboTax for reporting this kind of income? I do similar stuff and I'm wondering if the self-employed version will walk me through all these deductions or if I should go to a real accountant.

As someone who's been doing content creation for a few years now, I can confirm that both expenses you mentioned are likely deductible if you're treating this as a legitimate business. For the pedicures/manicures: Since your feet are literally the product in your content, these fall under "ordinary and necessary" business expenses. The key is documentation - keep receipts and note which services were specifically for content creation vs. personal maintenance. I recommend creating a simple spreadsheet linking each service to specific content/photoshoots. For the Surface tablet: If you're using it exclusively (or nearly exclusively) for your business, you can deduct the full purchase price using Section 179 or depreciate it over time. Since you mentioned it's basically only used for taking photos and posting content, you're in great shape here. Pro tip: Start tracking your business expenses in a dedicated app or spreadsheet right now. Include date, amount, purpose, and how it relates to your income-generating activities. This will make tax time so much easier and give you confidence if you're ever questioned about deductions. Also consider other potential deductions you might be missing: portion of your phone bill, internet costs, props/backgrounds, lighting equipment, storage/cloud services, and even a portion of your home if you have a dedicated space for content creation.

One thing nobody mentioned yet - you need to track your inventory carefully even with dropshipping. Even though Printful handles fulfillment, the IRS considers you the seller. I use a simple spreadsheet with: - Date of sale - Product cost (what Printful charges you) - Sale price (what the customer pays) - Platform fees (Amazon's cut) - Shipping costs - Net profit This makes filing Schedule C WAY easier and helps you calculate your true profit for self-employment tax purposes. You don't want to overpay by calculating tax on your gross sales!

One thing to consider is setting up as an LLC and electing S-Corp taxation once you're consistently profitable. I did this with my dropshipping business last year. The main benefit is that you can pay yourself a reasonable salary and take the rest as distributions, which aren't subject to self-employment tax. Saved me about 15% tax on a significant portion of my income. Obviously you'll want to wait until your business is consistently making at least $30-40k profit before this makes sense due to the additional costs of payroll services and state LLC fees.

My wife's name was misspelled on our joint return last year (Maria vs Mariah). We did nothing about it and still got our refund on time with no issues. I think people get way too stressed about minor stuff like this. The IRS has bigger problems than hunting people down over a typo lol.

I actually had the exact same issue with my name last year - Aleksandre vs Alexandre! What a coincidence. I ended up calling the IRS using that Claimyr service someone mentioned earlier (after wasting 2 hours on hold the traditional way first). The agent I spoke with said that as long as the first letter and general structure of the name are the same, and your SSN matches, it typically won't cause processing delays. She did recommend that I make sure my tax preparer uses the correct spelling next year though, because repeated discrepancies over multiple years could potentially flag your account for additional scrutiny. The agent was able to add a note to my file about the spelling variation, which gave me peace of mind. My refund came through right on schedule, so I think you should be fine. But definitely worth getting it on record with them if you can get through!