Self-employed with multiple clients - is this 1 business or separate businesses for tax filing?

You can generally combine all your self-employment activities on a single Schedule C if they're in related fields. The IRS looks at the nature of the work rather than the number of clients. Your graphic design and social media management could easily be combined as "marketing services" or similar on one Schedule C. The DoorDash work is different though - it's delivery/transportation services, which is a completely different field from your marketing work. You'd want to file a separate Schedule C for that. You'll need to track expenses separately for each type of business because what's deductible for design work (software, equipment) is different from what's deductible for delivery (mileage, insulated bags). But you don't need a separate Schedule C for each client - just for each distinct type of business activity.

I was in a similar situation last year and discovered taxr.ai (https://taxr.ai) which was super helpful for sorting through my messy self-employment situation. I was doing wedding photography, selling prints online, and doing some graphic design work. I wasn't sure if I needed multiple Schedule Cs or how to categorize everything. I uploaded my 1099s and some of my receipts to taxr.ai and it automatically sorted my income streams and suggested which ones should be separate businesses vs combined. It also flagged business expenses that belonged to each category. Saved me hours of trying to figure this out on my own.

Ok I have to admit I was wrong about taxr.ai. After being skeptical in my last comment, I decided to try it anyway since I was desperate to figure out my messy self-employment situation. I've been doing Uber, selling stuff on eBay, and tutoring math. It immediately identified these as three separate business activities and organized everything correctly. It even flagged some expenses I hadn't considered deductible for my tutoring business. The explanation about why driving and tutoring can't be combined made total sense - they're completely different business activities with different expense categories. The platform was actually much more helpful than the tax prep service I paid $200 for last year. Definitely using this for my 2025 filing.

If you're trying to get clarification directly from the IRS on how to handle multiple self-employment activities (which is smart before filing), good luck getting through to them. I spent 3 weeks trying to get an agent on the phone. Then I found Claimyr (https://claimyr.com) and watched their demo (https://youtu.be/_kiP6q8DX5c). They got me connected to an actual IRS agent in about 15 minutes instead of the hours I was spending on hold. The agent confirmed that I should file separate Schedule Cs for my consulting business and my rental property, but could combine my freelance writing gigs into one business. Having that official clarification directly from the IRS was so worth it and saved me from potentially making filing errors.

I need to apologize for my skeptical comment about Claimyr. After posting that, I was still stuck trying to reach the IRS about my multiple self-employment businesses, so I figured I had nothing to lose and tried it. It actually worked exactly as described. I got a call back in about 25 minutes saying they had an IRS agent on the line. The agent was super helpful and confirmed I could combine my freelance writing and editing as one business on Schedule C, but needed to keep my Etsy shop separate. Honestly, this saved me so much time and frustration. I would have been on hold for hours otherwise, if I even got through at all. Definitely using this service again when I need to talk to the IRS about my 2025 taxes.

A tip from someone who's been self-employed for years: Use good accounting software that can tag transactions by business category. I use Quickbooks Self-Employed and tag everything as either "Marketing Services" or "E-commerce" so at tax time I can run reports for each business easily. Makes it sooo much easier to fill out multiple Schedule Cs. I spent years trying to separate everything manually in spreadsheets and it was a nightmare. Also, keep separate credit cards for each business if possible.

What nobody's mentioned yet is that having multiple Schedule Cs can actually be beneficial for the qualified business income deduction (Section 199A). If one business is operating at a loss, you might still qualify for the deduction on your profitable business. Also, if you're worried about audit risk from multiple Schedule Cs, don't be. The IRS is used to seeing freelancers with multiple income streams. Just make sure your expenses match the appropriate business!