Self-Employment Expenses for Dummy Giggers

IRS Schedule SE instructions

Serendipity strikes without warning, you know? Well, at least it struck our researcher without warning this time: she was doing some background work on a post at Leaf Group's Sapling.com¹ and found that the author of that post had cited some place called "Made Man" as a reference... on a tax question. Ten seconds' effort made it pretty clear that the freelancer in question had cited a different freelancer at a different content farm. So, without further ado, we give you Francois DuBois of MadeMan.com and his attempt to educate people on "How to Claim Expenses When Self-Employed."² Oh, boy, another content farm...

We see a lot of questions about this topic answered (we use the term loosely) by various freelancers. A surprising number of them seem to be rather ill-informed about the process of filing taxes on self-employment income. For instance, many of them (including DuBois) seem unaware of Schedule SE; and most of them are at least a little confused about the deduction for half of self-employment tax.

But that isn't the reason we're here. No, the reason we're here is because Francois pulled the old bait-and-switch with this article. Although the title is "How to Claim...," Frankie includes just three sections: "Educate yourself," "Keep good records," and "Prepare the proper IRS schedule." That's it. Everything all general and simplistic, like something you'd expect... well, expect from a freelancer with an English degree writing at a content farm. It is not, however, a "how-to" article, despite the title.

Here's what DuBois has to say about filling out Schedule C:

"...When preparing the schedule C [sic], refer to the instructions that are provided at www.irs.gov. These instructions walk you through the preparation of the form, and break it down in an understandable manner. Note that there may also be supplemental schedules to file, such as those for self-employment and depreciation..."

Based on that and Francois' subsequent claim, i.e.,

"Simply follow the steps as outlined above, and while other people are pulling their hair out at tax time, you’ll be kicking back with a good cold beer..."

...it's a safe bet that DuBois' experience with filling out Schedule C, as well as Schedule SE, is pretty limited. After all, we think someone writing about this ought to mention why you'd want to claim expenses, not to mention some of the expenses that might apply. Then there's that business of "schedules... for self-employment and depreciation," which suggests that he has confused "self-employment" with "business." Besides, nowhere does he elaborate on what this "depreciation" stuff might be... There are entire books written on the subject of self-employment taxes, what expenses to claim, and how to pay taxes. Francois' 363 words ain't gonna cut it, especially if he thinks that referring people to the instructions for Schedule C is sufficient.

In other words, meet our first-ever Dumbass of the Day from Defy Media and MadeMan.com. The site's so disgusting, however, that DuBois will probably be our last.

¹ Don't worry, we'll get to her post later...
² This website is now defunct, but you can see the post using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   mademan.com/mm/how-claim-expenses-when-self-employed.html

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SE - TAXES