Are You Subject to Self-Employment Tax?
Self-employed individuals, unlike employees, don’t have someone withholding Social Security or Medicare (FICA) taxes along with pre-payments toward their federal (and state, where applicable) income tax from their wages during the year.
They are not being paid a wage; instead, a self-employed individual must keep a set of books showing income and expenses associated with their self-employed business that will allow them to determine their taxable profits (or losses). While an employer and an employee each pay half of the FICA taxes due on an employee’s wages, a self-employed person pays 100% of these taxes, termed the self-employment tax or SE tax for short, on his or her self-employment profit. If the individual has more than one self-employment activity, the net profits and losses from all of the self-employment activities are combined to determine the amount of the SE tax. However, two spouses have self-employment income, the couple cannot combine their SE incomes when figuring their individual SE tax.
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Taxpayers often will hire an individual or firm to provide services at the taxpayer’s home. Because the IRS requires employers to withhold taxes for employees and issue them W-2s at the end of the year, the big question is whether or not that individual is a household employee.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) computes standard mileage rates for business, medical and moving each year, based on a number of factors, to determine the standard mileage rates for the following year.
Generally, all monetary awards as the result of a legal action are fully taxable, with one exception. Under the exception, the tax code allows an exclusion from gross income for damages received due to a personal physical injury or physical sickness. Consequently, when a lawsuit is based on a physical injury or sickness, all damages (other than punitive damages, which are generally always taxable) flowing from that suit are treated as payments received due to a physical injury or sickness and are therefore excludable from income. This is true whether or not the recipient of the damages is the injured party.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that was passed last year included a new tax credit for employers that allows them to claim a credit based on wages paid to qualifying employees while they are on family and medical leave.
Not all provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are beneficial to taxpayers. One notable negative provision is the suspension of the deduction for employee business expenses. Under prior law, taxpayers who were employees were able to deduct expenses related to their employment as a miscellaneous itemized deduction, to the extent the expenses exceeded 2% of their adjusted gross income. Yet, under the tax reform, employee business expenses will not be allowed for tax years 2018 through 2025. 
One of the first trouble spots of the new tax reform is the W-2 withholding for 2018. Passage of the new law in late December hasn’t given the IRS much time to develop new withholding tables. This can be a big issue, as the recent Tax Cuts & Jobs Act (TCJA) substantially altered the tax rates and standard deductions, did away with exemption deductions, and increased the child tax credits—all elements of how the withholding allowances and tables have been structured in the past.
One major difference between being an employee and being self-employed is how you deduct the expenses you incur related to your work. A self-employed individual is able to deduct expenses on his or her business schedule, while an employee is generally limited to deducting them as itemized deductions.