{"id":88,"date":"2020-10-10T22:53:30","date_gmt":"2020-10-10T22:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sexworkertaxes.com\/?p=88"},"modified":"2020-10-10T22:53:30","modified_gmt":"2020-10-10T22:53:30","slug":"youre-a-sex-worker-how-do-you-pay-your-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sexworkertaxes.com\/index.php\/2020\/10\/10\/youre-a-sex-worker-how-do-you-pay-your-taxes\/","title":{"rendered":"You\u2019re A Sex Worker \u2014 How Do You Pay Your Taxes?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If your work is illegal, do you still pay your taxes? How do you deposit large amounts of cash without alerting\u00a0the IRS? Alongside standard financial talk of high-yield investments and\u00a0Excel spreadsheets, the Tumblr\u00a0Sex Worker Helpfuls<\/a>\u00a0addresses\u00a0a more specific set of questions like these. It\u2019s one of several sex worker-run websites and message boards that offer financial advice to strippers, cam girls, sugar babies, dominatrices and escorts\u00a0about everything from STIs to personal safety\u2014and money is a popular subject.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the old days, it was the kind of things you might talk about to other girls if you worked in a brothel together or at an escort service,\u201d says Maggie McNeill, a sex worker who has been in the business for 18 years and runs the blog\u00a0The Honest Courtesan<\/a>. \u201cNowadays, you strike up friendships on [message] boards and talk to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no wonder that finances\u00a0attract special concern. \u201cThe illegitimate and stigmatized nature of this work makes handling money feel really dicey and kind of stressful,\u201d said\u00a0Savannah\u00a0Sly, president of the social justice organization the Sex Workers Outreach Project. It\u2019s also\u00a0why\u00a0sex workers are\u00a0sometimes excluded from the mainstream financial industry. Things that so many people take for granted, from having a bank account to taking out a car loan, can be difficult and unnerving, if not outright impossible, propositions\u2014and they often require guidance.<\/p>\n

The most fundamental issue\u00a0is how to deal with large amounts of cash, particularly in escorting. Checks, which are unreliable and can reveal a sex worker\u2019s identity to their clients, are generally off-limits as a form of payment. Many online payment services, like PayPal, have policies against \u201ccertain sexually oriented materials or services,\u201d and you better believe sex worker Tumblrs\u00a0are\u00a0keeping a<\/a>\u00a0running tally<\/a>\u00a0of which services are sex worker friendly. Fiona Stone, who runs Sex Worker Helpfuls, says the most frequent financial questions she gets is\u00a0about whether PayPal and\u00a0similar services are \u201ca good, safe option\u201d\u2014she says they aren\u2019t. Some online payment processors have even seized sex workers\u2019 accounts and put a hold on their funds. Earlier this month, a\u00a0court ruled<\/a>\u00a0that PayPal customers who have had their accounts frozen might be entitled to settlements, but that hardly changes these companies\u2019 policies.<\/p>\n

This leaves cash as the best option,\u00a0and cash can be dangerous.<\/p>\n

Kate D\u2019Adamo, national policy advocate at The Sex Worker\u2019s Project, says policies like PayPal\u2019s\u00a0further marginalize sex workers and push them into \u201cmore and more isolation and into more and more vulnerability.\u201d She explains, \u201cIf someone knows you work in the sex trade, they know you probably have money in your house, so you\u2019re that much more likely to get robbed,\u201d she said. \u201cHaving to be paid in cash because you can\u2019t use PayPal means that you\u2019re walking home at night or getting in a cab somewhere with five-hundred dollars on you.\u201d And, of course, if a sex worker is robbed, he or she is likely less comfortable reporting it to police.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try not to keep that much (cash) on hand so that I can afford to lose it,\u201d says McNeill. \u201cI have a safe, it\u2019s not a big one, I don\u2019t want to keep around more than I can fit in that safe.\u201d\u00a0The sex work blog \u201cgood girls don\u2019t\u201d\u00a0advises<\/a>, \u201cone thing you should invest in is a good fire-proof safe.\u201d The post goes on to recommend, \u201cDon\u2019t hide cash in obvious places, like your mattress, the freezer, your toilet tank, and so on. If you\u2019ve seen it in a movie, other people have, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, sex workers can always deposit cash in banks accounts, and many do, although as the \u201cgood girls don\u2019t\u201d post warns, \u201canything you deposit in a bank account, pay bills with, or buy large items with leaves a paper trail.\u201d That can be of special concern when engaging in illegal sex work.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to mention the hazards in any line of sex work when\u00a0dealing with bank\u00a0tellers. \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of people who operate in cash so you\u2019re considered to automatically be suspect if you are operating in cash,\u201d said Sly. She still gets clammy going to the bank to make deposits. \u201cI constantly feel like I\u2019m gonna get busted,\u201d she said. It doesn\u2019t help that tellers, male ones in particular, tend to make jokes about large amounts of cash\u2014things like, \u201cBig night at the casino, huh?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to avoid people and use ATMs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

On top of that heap of financial burdens, there\u2019s the additional distrust among sex workers of the banking industry as a whole. In 2014, Chase shut down the accounts of several high-profile porn performers, calling them\u00a0\u201chigh risk.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0The company\u00a0denied<\/a>\u00a0that it was because of the nature of their professions,\u00a0although many sex workers\u00a0remain skeptical. Credit card companies have limited how\u00a0sex workers can spend their money, too: Last year,\u00a0responding to threats<\/a>\u00a0made by Sheriff Tom Dart of Cooks County, Illinois,\u00a0Visa and MasterCard stopped processing payments for adult ads posted to the classified site Backpage.com. (Late last year, an appeals court\u00a0ruled<\/a>\u00a0that Dart\u2019s actions\u00a0violated First Amendment rights.)<\/p>\n

Of course, all of this cash tends to raise questions about\u00a0taxes. It\u2019s a frequent topic across sex worker\u00a0advice\u00a0sites, and the message is almost always:\u00a0do them.<\/i>\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s that old principle of \u2018only break one law at a time,’\u201d said McNeill. As\u00a0a post<\/a>\u00a0on Sex Worker Helpfuls, which is re-blogged from\u00a0another site<\/a>, puts it, \u201cYou don\u2019t want to get hit with a six figure bill and\/or jail time at some point over the next few years because you weren\u2019t doing your taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post goes on to detail necessary forms\u20141040 for an individual tax return, Schedule C for business income and 8829 for a home office deduction\u2014and the need for income records. \u201cEven if you lack accurate records, give it your best shot and file. Even if you can\u2019t pay right now, file,\u201d it reads. \u201cEven if what you do is illegal, file (you don\u2019t have to write down what you do. We are all \u2018entertainers\u2019).\u201d<\/p>\n

Other posts\u00a0provide tips<\/a>\u00a0on recording income and\u00a0offer up<\/a>\u00a0Excel spreadsheets for keeping track of tax deductible expenditures, including makeup. But even with all this guidance it can still be terrifying terrain, especially for those engaging in an illegal trade, and sex worker-friendly CPAs can be hard to come by. One sex worker who asked to remain anonymous told me that after she\u00a0was upfront with an accountant about the nature of her work, he wouldn\u2019t stop texting her after-hours.<\/p>\n

This is why countless Tumblrs recommend Lori St. Kitts, the so-called Tax Domme, who has written the book,\u00a0\u201dThe Tax Domme\u2019s Guide for Sex Workers and All Other Business People.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0She was working as a tax preparer and phone sex operator when she noticed financial misinformation being passed around on sex industry message boards. When she started posting her own tax advice, people asked her to file their returns, and her specialty was born. Now she runs her business alongside her mother, a.k.a. the Financial Madam, under the tagline \u201cbringing your tax liability to its knees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSex workers are no different than any other business, but their deductions are a bit more interesting,\u201d Kitts said, pointing to questions about things like lube and sex toys. \u201cThere is this idea that because they deal in sex that they are all shady and criminals when the truth is that most are just trying to work a legal business under unfair laws and scrutiny.\u201d\u00a0She says she\u2019s seen \u201cmore vanilla businesses try to work around the tax law than sex work businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact,\u00a0Mistress Matisse, a Seattle-based dominatrix, says she shies away from deductions out of fear. \u201cI do worry a great deal. With my tax guy I\u2019m like, \u2018We are\u00a0declaring<\/em>\u00a0this, we are\u00a0paying taxes<\/em>\u00a0on it.\u2019 I\u2019m very conservative about what I deduct.\u201d Her accountant suggested that she write off her home office\u2014because, as she puts it, \u201chalf my house is my office\u201d\u2014but she\u2019s too concerned that it will raise a red flag. \u201cThere\u2019s a tax on me basically because I can\u2019t bring myself to the attention [of the IRS],\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But, as Matisse found, doing your taxes can be critical for gaining access to other financial tools, like loans. She first started doing her taxes thanks to a client who was an accountant, and then, many years later, a client who was a realtor helped her secure a mortgage. In part because she had a record of her income from paying taxes, she was able to call herself a \u201cself-employed consultant\u201d and get her mortgage application approved. That doesn\u2019t mean the process was easy. \u201cI felt like such a fraud, even though I was like, \u2018I know I have the money for this,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cI swear I lost like seven pounds from the stress during the month when we closed.\u201d<\/p>\n

As with any self-employed person\u2014or anyone in a profession that operates in large amounts of cash, like the restaurant industry\u2014it can be difficult to save. Sites like Sex Worker Helpfuls provide pointers\u00a0and\u00a0spreadsheets for setting up savings goals, whether it\u2019s for buying a house or for retirement\u2014but an online listicle is\u00a0not quite as motivating as\u00a0a relentless HR person who keeps asking about your 401k elections.<\/p>\n

McNeill simply\u00a0planned to live off of her husband\u2019s retirement income, but they have since divorced. \u201cI\u2019m now in position at 49-years-old where I don\u2019t have any savings of any kind,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m faced with a future in which, basically, I\u2019m going to have to keep working one way or another probably for the\u00a0rest of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes, though, people luck\u00a0out and\u00a0find a financial mentor: Sly had a\u00a0friend who helped her open a Roth IRA and Matisse happened to have a client who convinced her to get an IRA. But Matisse emphasizes that this, along with clients who were knowledgeable\u00a0about taxes and real estate,\u00a0was total luck.\u00a0\u201cOur basic financial safety should not depend on that sort of thing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Many sex worker rights activists argue that all of these financial burdens\u2014from having to\u00a0carry dangerous amounts of cash\u00a0to overpaying on their taxes out of fear\u2014are yet more\u00a0examples of how criminalization harms\u00a0sex workers and leaves them more vulnerable. It\u2019s also part of why sex workers have to\u00a0rely on financial \u201cwisdom \u2026 being transmitted though message boards that the government wants to shut down,\u201d as\u00a0McNeill put it, referring to sites like RedBook,\u00a0which the feds\u00a0shuttered<\/a>\u00a0in 2014. It had been a place where sex workers both advertised their services and found community with, and advice from, fellow sex workers.<\/p>\n

For now at least, there are still sites like Sex Worker Helpfuls. \u201cIt\u2019s very important,\u201d said Stone. \u201c[Sex workers]\u00a0are putting in work all the time to help make our lives less bogged down by a system that gladly takes our money but sneers at how it\u2019s made.\u201d<\/p>\n

By\u00a0Tracy Clark-Flory<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span>Leigh Cuen<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If your work is illegal, do you still pay your taxes? How do you deposit large amounts of cash without alerting\u00a0the IRS? Alongside standard financial talk of high-yield investments and\u00a0Excel spreadsheets, the Tumblr\u00a0Sex Worker Helpfuls\u00a0addresses\u00a0a more specific set of questions like these. It\u2019s one of several sex worker-run websites and message boards that offer financial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,6,5],"tags":[17,16,19,18,15,8],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-irs","category-sex-workers","category-taxes","tag-cash","tag-finances","tag-illegal","tag-pay-taxes","tag-sex-worker","tag-taxes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sexworkertaxes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sexworkertaxes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sexworkertaxes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sexworkertaxes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sexworkertaxes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sexworkertaxes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91,"href":"https:\/\/sexworkertaxes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/91"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sexworkertaxes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sexworkertaxes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sexworkertaxes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}