Death and...

The data-entry is done as of this morning, except for convention travel, in-kind payments (i.e. free CDs for the contributors), and inventory. Then it's a simple matter of tracking down all the various forms (W2, 1099) and transferring subtotals to the actual software. Straightforward, but,... ugh.

Bottom line is that it looks as though my CD sales made a small profit, at least in the sense of gross sales exceeding cost of goods sold. Whether that translates into a positive bottom line on the Schedule C will depend on just how many of my various expenditures I decide to call business expenses, as well as exactly how inventory gets handled: that's a section of the form I'm totally unfamiliar with at this point.

Tax advice requested

This is the first year I've actually had, you know, stuff to sell. I understand the general concepts, but there are a couple of things I could use advice on from somebody who's done it before:

• Inventory: I'm assuming I'm supposed to value unsold inventory at my cost, i.e. (total production cost)/(number of items).
• Promo copies: Do I value promotional and contributor copies at cost, or retail price? Again I'm assuming cost. (I'm not worried about gifts here: those I'm just treating as sales to myself.)
• Anything else you think I need to know?

I sold a CD! Yay!

CD Baby just send me email saying I'd sold another copy of "Coffee, Computers, and Song!" Sales have been slow this year, so there are still plenty in stock. Go for it!

Expect news of the next album sometime next week (i.e., after Death Tax Day).

So much for that part...

Done with the preliminary data entry.

( For those not familiar with my work process... )

The next steps are stacking up and sorting all the various forms 1099 so I can enter those, and making sure I have the sales and inventory numbers handy from the sales tax worksheets (09:08). That'll get done tonight. Then I have to actually set up the Mac laptop that I'm borrowing from work, install the software, and turn the crank. Which will change my mood to "cranky".

Added: Production cost: $3.05 each for About Bleeding Time, $3.16 each for Coffee, Computers, and Song. This is physical production and doesn't include royalties. I was originally thinking I didn't have to worry about those because they're all paid to myself, but then realized that I do need to compute them so that I can value my unsold inventory. Gaak!

On the other hand, that's good, because the royalties are all 2007 income for the songwriter (me), but the part that applies to unsold inventory gets subtracted from 2007's cost of goods sold. Um... right? Looks right.

(Anybody know offhand what [T]he statutory mechanical license fee is $.091 for songs 5 minutes or less, or $.0175 per minute or fraction thereof per copy for songs over 5 minutes.)... so that's $1.652 for CC&S, and $0.91 for ABT. So that's nearly $1900 total.