Self-Employment and Personal Finance Tracking: Tools for the Artist-entrepreneur

By Chris James, Actor & Community Educator

We’ve all asked the question before, “Why… why don’t they teach us how to do our taxes in high school?”. It’s one of the most common—and valid—questions when discussing financial literacy. Unfortunately, many artists often face large tax burdens due to a lack of knowledge, leading to overspending, debt, or not filing taxes for years.

The many people I’ve helped out of tax debt typically ended up there because of limited education, confusion, and eventually, fear of seeking help. Debt shame is a common source of mental health challenges and can seriously hinder personal, professional, and emotional growth.

Whether you’re a performer, designer, dancer, or social media coordinator, business taxes and personal finance have often been lonely paths of self-discovery. If you’re going through it, you’re not alone— and that can change today.

Let me preface: I’m not an accountant, financial planner, or CRA employee. My knowledge comes from years of managing three businesses and a charity initiative. I struggled like every other entrepreneur to learn this. Now, thanks to The AFC, I can share free online tools and tips from over two decades of experience to help you get started.

The Basic Basics

Every self-employed paycheque should be divided into three parts:

1. Income tax owed
2. Sales tax owed (HST, PST, GST, etc.)
3. And the money you get to live your life with

A common early mistake to avoid is treating the whole paycheque as spending money, leaving nothing for taxes. Building a habit of saving for taxes from every paycheque keeps us from struggling to pay this year’s tax bill with next year’s income.

Another beneficial habit is keeping organized records, transitioning from scattered loose receipts to keeping organized records.

Keeping Great Records

I’ve always believed in the axiom “When in doubt, make a spreadsheet”, and I’ve created a comprehensive Canadian business spreadsheet to help organize your expenses, income, and tax owed from each paycheque. If you’re also employed part-time—say, at a restaurant—you can track both employed and self-employed income on the same sheet.

There’s also a summary tab with all the info needed to file your taxes. You can pass it to your accountant or use platforms like Wealthsimple Tax. The spreadsheet comes with a YouTube series explaining how to use it step-by-step, but here’s a quick overview:

Using The Spreadsheet

Expenses are often the first hurdle in learning about taxes. Not knowing what you can write off has overwhelmed many first-timers. Our sheet explains every category, and sales tax is auto-calculated (e.g., HST in Ontario). Updating it can take as little as five minutes weekly.

With this spreadsheet, you can track:

• Business expenses like ads and meals
• Agent fees
• Union dues
• Even personal deductions like charitable gifts and medical costs

It also simplifies tracking tricky expenses like vehicle use, CCAs, and business use of home.

Tricky Expenses

Using a personal vehicle for business requires tracking gas, insurance, maintenance, and mileage (both total and business-related). The spreadsheet includes a trip tracker and Google Maps trick to log business travel, simplifying deductions.

CCAs, or capital cost allowances, are long-term assets that depreciate. A computer, for example, loses its value over time, and you can write off that value loss for several years. It can be a complex idea at first, but our tool makes it easy to track assets like cameras, cars, and even dance shoes.

Business use of home is another category that confuses many, even though monthly costs like rent are fairly predictable. Figuring out how much of your home expenses can be written off can often be complex. But our tracker simplifies the process.

Receipts

A simple home filing system for receipts is one of the easiest yet most overlooked business practices. For just a few dollars, you can grab…

• A binder
• Insert sleeves
• Tabs
• Markers
• And labels…

…to store pay stubs, contracts, and receipts.

For digital receipts, create one folder per year in cloud storage (e.g., Dropbox or Google Drive). This system helps during audits, warranty usage, and so much more.

Personal Finance

For those looking to manage their personal finances, we haven’t left you out. I have another universal spreadsheet for tracking debt payoff, savings goals, and monthly budgets for needs, debts, and wants. The debt payoff planning tab alone makes this spreadsheet a must-have.

Debt shame can create a loop of procrastination and delay life goals—like vacations or career plans—until a mythical “someday” when enough debt has been paid off. But I’ve witnessed the joy that comes when someone realizes they can start living now, guilt-free, with a handle on their finances. The planner helps put debt into perspective—and that’s a powerful stress reliever.

Conclusion

The hardest part is always starting. You don’t need to be perfect; even sporadic effort still helps. Every minute spent updating your tracker can save hours—if not days—later.

When using the personal finance tracker, enter your debt information, and a monthly goal for paying them off, and go from there. When using the self-employed tracker, start by entering your income for the year so far and then, if you feel up to it, start visiting some expense categories.

The biggest success stories that have come from helping people haven’t been the people that could finally afford the big vacations, or cool cars, but the success stories from people sending me emails detailing how their mental health has exponentially shifted in a positive direction after using one of the systems for just one month. I hope the tools bring you the same confidence, stress relief, and joy they’ve brought to so many others.