With just under a month left to file taxes, Cheddar News is keying in on freelance workers and wants to provide some tips so those Americans maximize either their refunds or what they have to pay back to the IRS.
Matthew Frankel, CFP and writer at the Motley Fool, joined Cheddar News to dish some insight into what freelancers can expect at filing time and how they can better plan in future filing years to avoid paying huge sums to the government.
"Freelancers are more responsible than the average person for keeping track of their own taxes and part of that requires putting money aside," he said. "It's important to know that you need to set money aside if you're just starting out as a freelancer or you will possibly get caught owing money."
The landscape of the U.S. labor market has shifted since the onset of the pandemic. 39 percent of Americans were freelance workers last year, which was a three percent jump from 2021.
Frankel noted that there are some breaks available to freelance workers that the general public is not allowed to take advantage of. Some of those include home office deductions, retirement accounts, self-employed health insurance and using your own vehicle for work can also be deducted.
"Honestly, the biggest mistake I see is people not asking for help when they need it. Not everyone is certified financial planner or tax attorney or anything like that," he said. "Being disorganized is definitely a big problem. I found this out the hard way early on in my career: to keep important records."
Chris Marquette of POLITICO breaks down how the FAA is cutting flights and facing a critical shortage of air‑traffic controllers amid the government shutdown.
Dr. Manuele Aufiero, CEO & Co‑Founder of Sizable En a groundbreaking undersea energy‑storage technology powering the global shift to clean, scalable power.
Paul Fipps, President of Global Customer Operations at ServiceNow, breaks down the company’s earnings beat, 5‑for‑1 stock split and booming enterprise AI demand
Movie studios are comfortable digging through comic bins for hot new intellectual property, but they are not comfortable returning the favor and sharing th
Chris Versace, CIO at Tematica Research and portfolio manager for TheStreet Pro, joins from the NYSE to break down the Fed’s latest move and Big Tech’s earnings
Sabrina Siddiqui, National Politics Reporter at The Wall Street Journal, joins to break down the SNAP funding delays and the human cost of the ongoing shutdown.
Arguments at the Supreme Court have concluded for the day as the justices consider President Donald Trump's sweeping unilateral tariffs in a trillion-dollar test of executive power.