Filing for TAXES💸 INCOME TRACKING as an influencer

Hello👋🏼 I’ve actually never introduced myself on this app because I only realised it was a thing that people did after posting my first post, and then I thought to myself that it doesn’t matter🤣

But today I filed & paid for my income tax as a self-employed person and decided that I wanted to share how I keep it an ✨easy & stress-free✨ process for myself. If you’re employed, you probably don’t have to do anything, but I never had the luxury of that. Being a content creator, I have multiple income streams and it can get very messy if I’m not disciplined and organised.

I make use of databases in the Notion app, but as mentioned in the photos, you can just use Google Docs, Microsoft Excel, Pages/Notes if you own Apple devices! If you love pen & paper, you can keep track of your income and expenses that way too. I think the most crucial thing is keeping up with tracking!

🍎How I breakdown my Notion database:

A. Date of project confirmed (Could be a brand sponsorship, affiliate-based or commission-based)

B. Title of project (For my easy reference)

C. Confirmed income to expect

D. Upload campaign brief from brand/any details I need to know while working on the project

E. When to post/project is completed

F. A column to check when I’ve been paid (This is where the initial dates are important because I can usually expect to be paid 30-60 days after sending an invoice to the company)

🍎I have separate pages and sections for my various income streams. Last year, I lumped Instagram & TikTok together because my main posting platform was just Instagram. But towards the end of the year, I joined TT’s creator programme so it was another stream of income that I have to keep track of so I’m currently keeping things separate for myself.

🍎Admin work as a Content Creator:

After all the back and forth with negotiating and confirming partnership details with a client, I’ll immediately fill up the rows accordingly.

Similarly, once I’ve sent out an invoice, or once I’ve been paid, I’ll update accordingly.

It also helps during my working process because I know where to find campaign briefs and important details. I save time by not having to scroll through email threads, or worse, ask the client to re-send documents again☠️

I personally don’t feel that it’s a hassle because everything is done digitally, so it’s really quick and neat. I think if you’re doing your bookkeeping manually, it’ll be quite hard to fix handwritten mistakes but I guess its just a personal preference!

So I do all of the above 365 days in the year and when it comes to tax season, I just total up all the numbers and thats my TOTAL INCOME.

👏🏼But that’s not all!!! You should be subtracting BUSINESS EXPENSES too. I guess if you’re a bigger content creator with a team behind you, you wouldn’t need these tips and probably already have a finance person to do this. But I’m CEO and Intern all at the same time and honestly, at this point, I can’t bother too much with keeping track of minor business expenses like buying props for the purpose of creating content for a brand campaign. Maybe this year I’ll be better at it. The business expenses I managed to subtract are for more notable things like additional iPhone, additional phone bill subscription, tech gear, etc.

I think that’s about it! In this new year, I’m doing the exact same thing again as it not only helps with filing my taxes conveniently, it also helps me keep track of my own income month to month.

☝🏼DO NOT DELETE ANY OF YOUR BOOKKEEPING DATA OR FILES. IRAS doesn’t require us to upload documents at the point of filing, but I guess they can pop in anytime to ask us for proof.

#financesg #notion #contentcreator #Tips #organisingtips #career #worklife #girlboss #influencer #Adulting101