mdlbear | Joy of Tax

Now that I have actual products (plug: buy CDs here), I have a good excuse to separate my publishing business (HyperSpace Express -- I really need to get that website up, don't I) from my writing business (Steve Savitzky). It becomes even more important now that Tres Gique is trying to get off the ground and is incurring things like travel expenses.

I need to keep better records, too; that's another problem. And I need to finish the sales taxes this week; that's not entirely unrelated to the record-keeping problem.

The immediate thing that needs noting is the fact that I forgot to pay half my royalties back in 2007. more specifically I forgot that mechanical license fees get paid at the statutory rate to both the songwriter and the songwriter's publisher. Oops.

... So my plan is to file two Schedule C forms this year, one for each business, and for HSX to pay Steve Savitzky his back royalties. It's not uncommon for songwriters to split their publishing share between themselves, or their own publishing company if they have one, and the the record label; exactly what fraction HSX owes should have been negotiated up front. But it's OK that it wasn't, in this case.

A more complicated set of decisions is which expenses to allocate where. An obvious one is to put equipment intended for songwriting and performing -- instruments, for example -- under me, and equipment intended for recording -- microphones, for example -- under HSX. Travel is a little less clear, but it's traditional for record labels to pay travel expenses for performers (it sells records) and HSX is already paying for travel related to Tres Gique. (Eventually there will be a Tres Gique Travel Fund -- watch this space.)

Computers are another item that's hard to allocate, since they're used for both songwriting and recording/editing. They're also used for a lot of other things around the house, so they go in my account for now.