Work At Home Self-Employed Tax Strategies

Self-employed individuals always cringe at the amount of taxes the pay to the IRS and state. Here are tax strategies for self-employed individuals that reduce those tax amounts.

Tax Strategies

The good news is being self-employed is one of the best tax strategies out there. Unlike a salaried employee, the full scope of tax credits and deductions available in the tax code are now available to you. The key, of course, is understanding the available deductions and organizing your business in a manner that allows you to maximize the write-offs.

The number one tax strategy for self-employed individuals is to keep receipts for every business expense and write them off. Practically anything can be deducted, so do it. Acceptable expenses include cell phone usage, business mileage, office supplies, home office deductions including part of mortgage or rent and so on. If you’ve filed a tax return while self-employed, you are probably already aware of this so lets move on to more specific tax strategies for self-employed individuals.

Maximizing you non-capital losses can result in major tax savings. If your expenses exceed your income for a year, you obviously will not have to pay taxes for that year. What most people don’t realize, however, is that such losses can be carried forward for seven years and deducted against future income. Alternatively, the same losses can be carried backward three years to recover past taxes paid. The end result of this situation is you can turn a bad business year into an income generator by applying the losses to taxes in other years which effectively wipes out your tax bill for those years.
Another tax strategy is to look at your side businesses. If you have one business, you’ll often have a second one that is tailored to making some money off a personal interest. While you are in it mostly because you like it, you may not realize it qualifies as a business and can help you reduce your taxes. Let’s assume you are primarily a self-employed consultant, but also write travel articles on the side. You may view the travel articles as a hobby, but it is in fact a business. If you’ve sold or even tried to sell any of your articles to a publication, all of your expenses related to travel writing can be deducted from your taxable income. This includes trips and so on. These, deductions can significantly reduce your taxable income from the consulting business. Make sure to get a grasp of your overall business efforts, even if you don’t really consider them to be a business.

Consider employing your children to save on taxes. A child under 18 that works for you does not have to pay FICA and so on. If the total wages for the year are under $4,250, they will pay no taxes and you can write off this amount as a legitimate business expense. Of course, the child needs to actually be doing a legitimate business task, but filing and similar manual tasks certainly will qualify.

Tax strategies for the self-employed are plentiful. If you are self-employed, consider getting professional help. A good professional will save you thousands upon thousands of dollars in taxes, more than making up for their fees. Oh, you can also deduct their fees!

Richard A. Chapo is with BusinessTaxRecovery.com - obtaining tax refund recovery for overpaid small business taxes. Visit BusinessTaxRecovery.com to read more business tax articles.

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Directories are NOT Search Engines. They are directories, like phonebooks, that have been categorizing the Internet for years. Of the most prominent directories on the Internet the top one is DMOZ but there are also some 200 lesser known ones.

Some of the Search Engines use the directory contents in their Search Results. Look Smart is one, AOL is another. Yahoo used to use the DMOZ directory as part of its search results. Many lesser known, but active, search engines use directories as the basis for providing information for all of their searches.

Search Engines will see these highly rated inbound links and raise your ranking. They sometimes see these as added credibility for your website. At the very least it creates more ways for people, and search engines, to find you and this means more traffic - for free!

The DMOZ Directory

The DMOZ directory currently has over 590,000 categories and sub categories. However, the main directory itself is made up of only 16 main categories. All other categories fall under these 16 “top level” categories. Think about this – Everything in the known universe is categorized under 16 categories. This might seem impossible but when you look at the DMOZ directory you realize it is true!

The DMOZ directory is maintained by over 64,700 humans who have volunteered their time to help organize what, otherwise, would be utter chaos. Could you pay that payroll every month?

DMOZ has its own built in search function. But the idea is to click your way through a main category going down, sideways, backwards and up and down. Within just a few seconds you should be able to find the category you are looking for and then you are presented with a list of relevant sites.

The beauty of directories is that you get to decided what is relevant NOT the Search Engines. You then click the related link and your search is over. What could be simpler? My only question is why more people don’t use this treasure trove of information.

How to Get Listed In DMOZ

Remember DMOZ is staffed by volunteer editors, which mean it can sometimes take a while to get your site listed. I have listed some simple steps below that should speed up your process. This is the methodology I used to get my sites listed within days – NOT your typical months.

1. First and Foremost find a relevant category that has an editor. When you have found the category in which you would like to be included scroll to the bottom of the page and look for an editors name, or handle. If you find a statement that says “Volunteer to edit this category” it means you have found a category with NO active editor. Thus listing your site here means it could take months to get your site listed.

2. Here is the most important tip I can give you. On the bottom of each category page it will tell you the date that the category was last updated. If the date says January of 2002, for instance, there is a very good chance that no one is going to be updating that page very quickly so move on. Look for a category with a very recent date, which has an editor listed, this illustrates that someone is actively updating that page.

3. You found your category but it doesn’t have an editor, now what do you do? Go back to the top and select the NEXT best category. All DMOZ main categories have what are called “Meta Editors”. These are in charge of several, sometimes hundreds, of sub categories. SO if you can’t find the proper category submit your site to the main category and the Meta Editor will pass it along to the proper sub-category editor. Just remember this will add time to how long it takes to get your site listed.

4. Other tidbit – Did you know you are actually allowed TWO listings within DMOZ? The first listing is “subject” specific. The second listing is “Geographic” specific. To list in this second category drill down through the “Regions” portion of DMOZ. When you find your region (be as specific as you want all the way down to city) and submit your site for inclusion. Just remember tip #1 above. The same applies here.

5. What if you still have no luck? Find the closest category that fits and write the editor a really nice email explaining your dilemma. Most of the editors will write you back, IF YOUR NICE! The editor you wrote to will usually give you some helpful tips or maybe even a contact name to work with to get your site listed. You can find out how to write an editor by clicking on their name at the bottom of the page.

6. Your MOST important tip. Read the category description! Yes read, read the category description very carefully and follow the rules set down. The editor will very often give you tips and hints as to what they want to get from you. If they ask for a 20 word site description DO NOT give them a 25, 30 or 50 word description! If you insist on writing long flowing paragraphs your site will probably NEVER get listed! Why? Because to maintain integrity each editor is required to go read through your site. Bottom line is you are wasting their time by not following the rules – remember these are volunteers that also have other jobs.

7. DMOZ editors do not have conflict of interests. Each editor has to go through a review process where they submit the urls of all of the sites they are associated with. The editor and his associated sites are reviewed and if he is accepted he would be in charge of non-conflicting categories. All editors are currently under review.

8. DMOZ is fair. There isn’t any race to the top of the listings. You can’t buy your way in you can’t purchase paid listings to get listed higher. The sites are even listed in Alphabetical order unless you drill down through the categories.

9. Why go through all of this work? Its worth it because DMOZ supplies its database to over 322 other Search Engines, directories, intranets and databases. For a FREE listing that is a lot of bang for the buck!

10. Volunteer to become an editor. You might have some fun or, at the very least, you will learn a lot about how to market more effectively online. According to the DMOZ administration it doesn’t take a lot of time and could be a lot of fun.

ZEAL Directory from LookSmart

How do I add a site to the Zeal Directory?

The Zeal directory is for Non-Commercial sites only. They use the same guidelines as the DMOZ directory uses. So pay attention to the guidelines and be sure you submit your site BEFORE you add any monetization links! I strongly suggest you read their guidelines before pursuing.

Again, this is one of those sites that uses editors and can not be used for advertising. When you write your site description be very careful to only include a factual description. The best way to understand the write up methods they will accept is to take the test they offer when you first sign up.

Go to: http://www.zeal.com/ and register. Familiarize yourself with their site and take the test. If you miss any questions analyze carefully why you missed the question. This is the most important thing you can do because when you are ready to add your site you’ll get it right the first time – and win favor with the editor! Why? Because you made his/her job easier!

Here are just a few other Directories you can list in:

joeant.com/
skaffe.com/
bluefind.com/
goguides.org/
gimpsy.com/
wowdirectory.com/
sevenseek.com/
thisisouryear.com/

Remember these will create Inbound Links for your site and also enhances your site in the eyes of the Search Engines. Will they directly increase your Page Rank – No, but they all add credibility to your site.

Also consider listing in topic specific directories. These can be found at:
isedb.com/html/Web_Directories/Specialty_Directories/

In closing let me leave you with the most important tips in getting listed in the directories.

• Do NOT try to list your site until you have at least 10 Tier 2 pages.

• Do NOT have any commercial links on your site. All of these directories prefer non-commercial sites and if you have a bunch of links on your site pointing out to sales sites they might consider your site a commercial site.

• Always list with the directories BEFORE you start swapping links. Many of the links you may swap with will go to commercial sites affecting your status.

Michael Domeck is the editor of the Profit News and has been marketing on the Internet for over 5 years. He often consults with clients on Internet marketing for their Home based business.

Michael Domeck is a member of the White Hat Guys team and has helped many students fullfill their dream of building and profiting from their own personal web buisnesses.

He has developed and many sites that were specifically about Internet marketing. His primary site is Business Profit Tools

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A layer of protection to the kit.

EyeEarn T-Shirt and mini labels

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Complete EyeEarn promotional items from the starter kit.

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