Sean Pyles

I think I'm about to have some horror stories of my own, potentially.

This is my first time filing taxes as a business owner, and I got married last year, so I'm going to be in a whole different world of filing my taxes.

I'm excited about it.

I'm a little bit nervous.

I wouldn't be surprised if I have an unexpected bill, but we'll talk about that when the time comes.

Yes.

Well, the listener seems to have three primary questions.

One, how to navigate their tax status.

Two, how to set up their taxes.

And three, how savings and investment accounts might impact their tax bill.

So let's start by talking about tax status, which defines your household situation for the IRS.

Our listener wants to know how to navigate their tax status for contract work and mentioned in their message that previously they filed as single and filed their contract work on their personal taxes, which isn't uncommon.

Well, it can get confusing because there are five different filing statuses.

People may not be aware of that, so let me just tick through them super quickly.

There's single, there's married filing jointly, there's married filing separately, there's head of household, there's also qualifying surviving spouse.

So some of these are pretty specific niche circumstances, but knowing which one might be best for you isn't always super clear-cut.

Now, being self-employed, whether part-time or full-time, shouldn't impact your tax filing status all too much.

But the filing status you choose can affect things like your tax rate, your standard deduction, tax credits, other deductions.

And you really do want to get this right.

And most self-employed people report business income on their personal tax return, as the listener did previously.