Another Dummy with 1099-Misc Instructions - The Freelance Files MMCC

Version of the IRS 1099-MISC warning

Besides the high probability that freelancers writing for the once and future eHhow.com had no idea what they were talking about, there were other common shortcomings of the information (and we use the word loosely there) published on the site. Chief among those was that the contributors, as they were called, had to meet a minimum word count (MWC). In other words, unless the hacks pounded out a couple hundred words on the topic, they wouldn't get paid. The last tie we looked, "You can't do that" is only four words; hence, no stipend. Whether Jonathan Shaffer was dissembling just to get some cash with "How to Print Your Own 1099 Misc Forms" (at BizFluent.com) or he was merely ignorant, we'll never know. That he was wrong, however, is rather obvious.

Filing Late Taxes for Dummies

It's eight months until the next scheduled income tax day (April 15th, that is) and already the natives are getting restless in the AN bullpen. They're not restless because of taxes, though; they're restless because of bogus advice about taxes. Yup: one of them was tracking down an old award recipient and came across yet more screwed-up tax advice hiding in plain sight at Sapling.com, one of the niche sites where Leaf Group dumps old eHow.com content. We now present Pam McCallum and her post, "Can I File Two Years of Taxes at One Time?"

Late Tax Filing for Dummies

IRS late filing application

When tax time comes around, we here at the Antisocial Network tend to be leery of the "community help" forums at places like TurboTax, mainly because we know just how clueless a lot of the people offering  that "help" are in real life. We'd rather go to the IRS website or get help from the likes of J. K. Lasser, if the truth be told. After all, we definitely wouldn't want to find ourselves in trouble for taking "tax advice" from the likes of Denise Caldwell (now attributed to Jerusha Hardman) at least based on her Sapling.com article, "Can I Wait and File Taxes Next Year?"

Tax Services for Dummies

tax forms

It's coming... it'll be here in just a few weeks... the dreaded TAX DAY!!! And all across the country, people are wondering about "Places to Get Your Taxes Done."¹ If the truth be told, most of them are searching for the cheapest place to get your taxes done. They aren't terribly concerned about accuracy, although they probably should be... Whatever the case, they probably don't want to take advice from the likes of Jose Leiva, who penned the article of that title at PocketSense.com.

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...

Estimated Taxes for Freelancing Dummies

Nobody likes paying taxes, are we right? But, as Benjamin Franklin (supposedly) said, "The only things certain in life are death and taxes." Well, something like that, anyway. And if we want to continue to have an army, roads, schools, libraries, and the like; even freelancers for content farms will have to pay taxes. We're talking freelancers like Courtney Ramirez of LoveToKnow.com, who probably needed more help than she got before writing "Freelance Writers and Estimated Taxes."

Self-Employment Taxes for Dummy Freelancers

Schedule SE

You'd think that someone who collected at least a couple thousand bucks for pounding our "answers" at eHow.com would have a fairly good handle on the self-employment tax situation, You'd be wrong, though, at least based on the rampant cluelessness of freelancers writing about Taxes. That doesn't come as a surprise to staffers who've participated in online communities at freelancer sites like Demand Media and Epinions, where a lot of people seem every bit as ill-informed as eHowian Melly Parker. Parker's also responsible for stupidifying her readers on the topic in the PocketSense.com post, "How to Claim Self Employment"¹ [sic].

Ambiguous Tax Questions for Citizen Dummies

We occasionally check over our list of favorite contributors, and we noticed that it had been almost a year since the last time we trotted out one of our more prolific nominees. He's an guy named Tom Lutzenberger, who spread his peculiar form of misinformation across a wide variety of categories during his time at eHow.com. Whether it's plumbing, mining, the oil industry, or HVAC; Tom's there to muddy the infowaters. Given that the guy has an MBA, though, you'd think that he'd get the answer to "When Can You Start Filing Taxes?"¹ right for PocketSense.com... but you'd be wrong.

IRS Payment Alternatives for Dummies

1040 ES voucher

When you come right down to it, the main reason most of our awardees are nominated in the first place is that they had no idea what they were talking about (but talked about it anyway). In many cases, this ignorance is sort of second-hand: the people asking questions knew so little about the topic they couldn't even formulate a proper question. The eHow.com model was to scrape search-engine queries for their contributors to "answer," a recipe for disaster given their stable of writers... writers like Pamela Gardapee, who tackled "How to Make IRS Payments" for PocketSense.com.¹

Self-Employment Taxes, the Dummies Version

IRS schedule SE

You would think that someone who picks up few bucks here and there as a freelancer would have become pretty familiar with the process of calculating and filing self-employment taxes. You'd think that someone who claims to be a "a writer... specializing in personal finance and business topics" would have an especially good handle on the topic. That's why we were taken aback by the sloppy job Michael Kennan (aka Mark Keenan) did in his PocketSense article "How to Figure Self-Employment Taxes."¹

The Per Diem for Dummies

travel expense accounting

We see this situation every day here at the Antisocial Network: freelancers writing for one of the content farms who attempt to explain something they simply don't understand to begin with. The results are sometimes comic, sometimes puzzling, and sometimes dangerous; however the most common word describing them is "wrong." Take, for instance, Demand Media's Charlie Gaston, usually found misinforming people about travel-related topics at Trails.com. We found her this time, though, at Chron.com, explaining to the best of her limited abilities "How to Write Off a Per Diem."¹

TurboTax for the Utter Dummy

The year is right there, Damarious!

Back in late 2011, the freelancing universe was rocked by an update to Google's search algorithm known as the Panda update (not for the cute, cuddly "bears," for a Google engineer named Panda). The stated reason for the update was to reduce the search rank of so-called content farms in favor of "fresh" content, mostly on social media (see where that got us...). In articles about the change, frequent reference was made to low-quality information from eHow.com; and today's DotD is a classic example of that substandard fare: the question, "Can Turbo Tax Be Used Every Year?"¹ as answered by Damarious Page.

Self-Employment Tax for Dummy Freelancers

Paying estimated quarterly taxes

Just about everyone on staff at the Antisocial Network has been self-employed at one time or another, from augmenting their income by writing content for companies like Demand Media to selling stuff on eBay to consulting at three figures per hour rates. The first time we had to pay taxes on self-employment income we were all faced with the same question: "How do I Pay Social Security Self-Employment Taxes?"¹ Thankfully, we had better advice than what eHowian Etch Tabor offered up...

1099-MISC Forms for Freelancing Dummies

Form 1099-MISC

You'd think that someone who regularly raked in a pile of cash for freelance work would be somewhat familiar with the ins and outs of the IRS forms for self-employment income and, especially, the infamous IRS form 1099-MISC. After all, that's the official record of a freelancer's pay, as many of our staffers know. Given that eHowian Rebecca Mecomber claims to be a "professional blogger and writer," she should probably be more familiar with 1099s and "How to Print a 1099 Miscellaneous Form" than her post seems to suggest... (see the post at BizFluent.com)¹

1099 Tax Forms for Dummies

Form 1099-MISC

The sometimes stupid, sometimes hilarious, and occasionally hilariously stupid website eHow.com is infamous for the moronic answers to inane question its contributors have provided over the years. We at the Antisocial Network are well aware that the Panda update to Google's algorithm was created precisely to reduce the page rank of content like that found at eHow.com. If you've ever wondered why, all you need to do is wander around the site for an hour or two. Today, for instance, we began with a search for the word "logarithm" and, in just four random jumps, ended up at a piece by Larry Parr entitled "How to Print a 1099 Tax Form off the Computer" (it now lives at Leaf niche Sapling.com).