I am home from work today with a sick child. She just finally fell into a much-needed nap on the sofa, so I thought I’d finally catch up on this series of posts I wanted to do from my trip to the Blissdom Canada conference. You can read the first post here, and this is the second one.
There’s no formal training to become a blogger. You teach yourself what you can and you learn from other more experienced members of the blogging community. That’s why blogging events are such a big deal in our world — we get to connect with our community in a face-to-face way and we also get to learn more about this crazy craft called blogging.
I just attended one of this “big deal” events — Blissdom Canada — over the past weekend (I attended last year too). Held in Toronto, 500 bloggers flocked in from all provinces to learn, network, and party.
To Book Keep or not to Book Keep
If you keep a blog, you can consider it a hobby and leave the taxman out of it. But once you start accepting advertisements and products to review, you’ve got a business and the taxman will want his share.
To book keep is a burden. This alone makes me question (regularly!) if I should cut out all advertising and product-related talk on the blog. It’s an internal dialogue that I don’t enjoy because more than anything I enjoy my blog and I do enjoy what I write about here.
Nothing in Life is Free
It’s a bit of a grey space in the blogosphere at the moment on how to book keep and what you should and could claim. I have yet to speak to a blogger and hear the same answer twice on how they manage the notion of book keeping. So my curiosity led me to a Blissdom Canada microsession on Book Keeping for Bloggers.
More than anything, the session simply reinforced in my mind that ‘nothing in life is free’.
The Summary
This session was led by Brian Kent-Baas. I’ve never spoken to Brian before, and yet despite being a complete stranger to me, I attended his wedding. So that was weird. Anyhow, he was a lovely guy who likes to fill his head with tax-related knowledge and isn’t afraid to say when he doesn’t know the answer to a question (which I really appreciate).
Like any business, you need to track your income against your expenses. If there’s anything left over at the end, that is profit and it’s taxable. I’ve heard of many people trying to run their businesses at a loss so they can avoid taxes, but according to Brian, you can only do this for three years. After that point, you need to show some profit.
What is income?
Income for a blogging can be any of the following listed below. That means that you need to know the value of the product or service and have the paperwork to back it up. This is a mind-shift from thinking that “income” is something you can pay your bills with because “income” could be a tube of toothpaste a company just sent you!
- Any product a company sends you to review (whether you write about it or not) or giveaway to readers
- Any trip a company or agency sends you on (yep – airfare, hotels, food, the whole bit!)
- Any advertisement shown on your blog or revenue received from an advertising network
- Now that your blog is a business, you have office space in your house and you can claim expenses related to its upkeep. That includes a portion of your home’s insurance, heating, electrical, etc.
- Your internet is a necessary business tool. You can claim 100% of it.
- When you drive to meet a sponsor or attend a networking event, you can claim the mileage and/or fuel to do so.
- Also, those additional services you might need for your business such as book keeping (of course!), website design or coding, hosting, and domain name ownership.
What did I miss?
If you attended this same session or if you have your own experience related to blogging and book keeping, please let me know any other tips that might be helpful!
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