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At this time of yetaxesar, I have taxes heavily on my mind. Perhaps you, too, are busy preparing your 2011 returns before that dreaded April date, or maybe you’re way ahead of me and have already taken care of everything. While being a self-employed studio owner can be a bit of a pain come tax time, there are also many deductions you should be taking advantage of:
Business Expenses

There are a number of tax deductible business expenses allowed by the IRS. These include money spent on advertising, travel, memberships, licenses, and maintenance. If you put an ad in the paper, purchased a business license or membership for your local teaching organization, attended a conference, provided incentive prizes, had your piano tuned or bought coffee during a business meeting, then you should be reporting these on your tax forms. Studio Helper and Music Teacher’s Helper make recording these things very simple. You simply enter the expense in the Studio Expense portion of the dashboard and toss the receipt into a folder in your filing cabinet so that you have supporting documentation in case you are audited. Be sure to provide specific details when recording the expense so that you know what category it fits into when you are doing your taxes the following year.

E_mailA few months ago I wrote a blog post about ways to communicate with your customers.  I will now focus on specific ways the Internet alone makes contact with our clients simple and effective.  I firmly believe that keeping the lines of communication with our business contacts open not only results in a long-term relationship with our customers but also a more pleasant and effective relationship for all involved.

The Internet makes it simple to keep customers up-to-date on everything happening in your studio–events, continuing education, performance opportunities.  Using the Internet to frequently communicate information lets customers know that you are an active and involved teacher.

PDF of “Facebook_1”Last blog entry I discussed how I communicate with clients, faculty, and staff at my music school, Brooklyn Music Factory. This entry is going to be a follow up pointing out what seems to have worked and what seems to have failed for us. Assessing regularly your system of communication and outreach is vital, I believe, to ensuring that you are reaching everyone you intend to connect with. To me, efficiency in communicating is important because is allows my faculty and I to stay focused on what we do best which is develop our unique curriculum and methodology for teaching music to our 75 students.