You sold a few pieces at a spring show. A friend commissioned something. Your online shop has been quietly ticking over. Somewhere in there, a line may have been crossed.
Most artists assume there is a number. Some dollar figure where a switch flips and the paperwork begins. There isn’t one. The line has nothing to do with how much you made, and that is exactly why so many people are on the wrong side of it without realising.
Here is what makes it uncomfortable. The consequences do not wait for you to notice.
If you are operating like a business and not claiming as one, you are paying tax on money you already spent making the work. Every booth fee, every bag of supplies, every mile driven to a show. That money is gone and it did not have to be.
If something goes wrong with a piece you sold, and you have no structure in place, the claim does not stop at the business. There is no business. It comes to you, your home, and your savings. The artists this happens to are almost never the ones who thought it might.
And the opportunities you do not hear about are the quietest cost of all. Shows that ask for a tax number. Galleries that want to invoice an entity. Wholesale buyers who need paperwork you cannot produce in the two days they gave you.
A short and slightly annoying quiz
Answer these honestly.
Do you know whether your state requires you to register before you sell at a market?
If you sold at a show one state over this year, do you know whether you needed a permit for it?
Could you say, right now, what your mileage deduction is worth?
If a customer was injured by something you made, do you know who is liable?
Do you have anything in writing with the shop currently holding your work?
If you hesitated on two or more of those, you are not behind. You are normal. Almost every artist selling today learned this by getting it wrong first, usually at the worst possible moment, and usually about something that would have taken an afternoon to sort out in advance.
That is the whole reason we built the module - Legal Foundations for Artists.
Seven short videos that take you through it in the order you will actually face it. What structure to choose and when it should change. Which numbers to register for. How to keep the money clean. What to insure, and what not to bother with. How to protect the work itself. No jargon, no law degree, and a printable documents and checklists.
You did not start making art because you wanted to think about sales tax. Handle it once, properly, and you get to stop thinking about it.
