> Hard disagree. At typical self-employed scale, fiddling around with avoiding taxes is a waste of time (and money)
To the nearest percentage approximation, 100% of self-employed and small businesses do exactly this at a basic level, and it's low effort. There's an entire support industry to keep it simple.
Tax efficiency, which is the polite name for avoiding taxes, which is perfectly legal and encouraged, is literally taught as one of the first things in small business courses, somewhere after book-keeping and giving the books to your accountant.
It means you ask your accountant what expenses to write down, they tell you, then later they look at your books and say "did you know if you do these other little things like this, altogether you can save another thousand?" and you go, wow, I didn't think of those, I guess you are worth the fee after all.
Roughly 100% of self-employed and small businesses do this, in any place where it's common to use an accountant.
Not only self employed and small businesses! If you work as an employee and have a 401(k), you are participating in a form of tax avoidance: deferral. Your money goes into it, but it's not taxed until much later when you retire and take it out. If you have an HSA, a Roth IRA or a 529 plan for your kid's education, you're also deferring and/or avoiding taxes. If you buy municipal bonds you're avoiding some taxes. There are a few "it would be foolish not to" ways for middle class people to keep their finances tax efficient. Obviously there are many more ways available to rich people and businesses, and they can shelter orders of magnitude more money than us, but let's not pretend that tax avoidance is something only they do.
> Hard disagree. At typical self-employed scale, fiddling around with avoiding taxes is a waste of time (and money)
To the nearest percentage approximation, 100% of self-employed and small businesses do exactly this at a basic level, and it's low effort. There's an entire support industry to keep it simple.
Tax efficiency, which is the polite name for avoiding taxes, which is perfectly legal and encouraged, is literally taught as one of the first things in small business courses, somewhere after book-keeping and giving the books to your accountant.
It means you ask your accountant what expenses to write down, they tell you, then later they look at your books and say "did you know if you do these other little things like this, altogether you can save another thousand?" and you go, wow, I didn't think of those, I guess you are worth the fee after all.
Roughly 100% of self-employed and small businesses do this, in any place where it's common to use an accountant.