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A few tax deadlines to be aware of in the next few days:
Annual income taxes must be postmarked April 17 this year. This year, the traditional deadline date, April 15, falls on a Sunday, and Monday, April 16, is a holiday celebrated in Washington, D.C. (Emancipation Day). From IRS.gov:
According to federal law, District of Columbia holidays impact tax deadlines in the same way that federal holidays do; therefore, all taxpayers will have two extra days to file this year. Taxpayers requesting an extension will have until Oct. 15 to file their 2012 tax returns.
Also from the IRS Web site:
Individuals making $50,000 or less can use the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program for free tax preparation and, in many cases, free electronic filing. Individuals age 60 and older can take advantage of free tax counseling and basic income tax preparation through Tax Counseling for the Elderly. Information on these programs can be found at IRS.gov.
For tax law questions or account inquiries, taxpayers can also call our toll-free number (7 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time) or visit a taxpayer assistance center, the locations of which are listed on IRS.gov.
April 17 will aslo be the deadline for quarterly taxes, including:
If you’re in trouble on your taxes, you should know about an IRS initiative that doesn’t seem to be getting a whole lot of publicity — the Fresh Start Initiative.
PENALTY RELIEF
The Fresh Start Initiative’s penalty relief plan will help taxpayers who have been unemployed for more than 30 days to avoid failure-to-pay penalties by extending to them a six-month grace period. This applies to the 2011 tax year. You must pay the sum in full by Oct. 15, 2012 to avoid paying the penalties. To qualify, you must fit one of these criteria:
Your income may not exceed $200,000 if you file “married, filing jointly” (or $100,000 if you file as the head of the household). Your 2011 balance due may not exceed $50,000. To qualify, you must complete a Form 1127A.
INSTALLMENT AGREEMENTS
The program also makes it easier for some people to qualify for streamlined installment agreements. The threshold for using an installment agreement without having to supply the IRS with a financial statement has been raised from $25,000 to $50,000. An installment agreement is an option for you is you can’t pay your taxes by the due date. Penalties are reduced, however the interest still acrues on the amount owed. To qualify, you must agree to monthly direct-debit payments. You can set up an installment agreement by going to the IRS’s Online Payment Agreement site and following the instructions.
OFFER IN COMPROMISE
An earlier prevision of the Fresh Start Initiative expanded the bredth of the Offer in Compromise provision. An Offer in Compromise lets you settle your tax debt for less than the amount you owe if you fit a certain set of criteria including your ability to pay, income, expenses and aset equity. The IRS warns that this program is not for everyone and urges you to check your tax pro’s credentials before going down that road. The full information is here if you’d like to peruse it.
Q. What is your take on Graphicaly becoming a digital content publisher? http://graphicly.com/ is $150 worth someone else handling it?
Graphicly is offering a service that will enable you to upload and distribute your ebooks across a wide spectrum of retail download platforms, including iBookstore, Amazon and the Android Market.
Here’s a price breakdown of Graphicly’s offerings. (Click on the image for a larger image.)
;)
[Edited] I’m going to focus on the Ebook plan. The $500 app offer, however, doesn’t sound so bad.
It’s a pretty cool concept: I upload my book once, and Graphicly formats it for several different platforms and places it in the different retail download sites. That means I can reach all of the following:
Additionally, it’s important to notice the following:
Each marketplace/platform (such as iBookstore, Amazon Kindle, Android Market, etc.) takes a mandatory percentage of the suggested digital sale price (ranging from 30% to 55%, depending on the marketplace/platform). Graphicly will not take an additional percentage.
The only thing that gives me pause is the fact that this is a self-service offer. Unless I want to chip in an extra $100, this is going to be something that I’m going to have to tweak correctly so that it displays correctly across all those platforms. Having had a little experience making a PDF translate to MOBI and EPub formats, I can tell you that this isn’t as simple as it sounds.
If someone has experimented with this option, I would love a report on the interface of the self-service software. If not, I will see if I can research it for a future post.
It seems like a nifty enough service. What I like about the original question is that its framed perfectly: Is $150 worth someone else handling it? And that’s a simple enough question of cost-effectiveness. If I offer a book through Graphicly, I start out $150 in the hole.
The question I have to ask is whether I can make that back — and then continue to make profits past that mark by selling product through middlemen who are taking between 30% and 55% of the money for each sale of the book.
For the sake of argument, let’s set a price at $3 for an ebook. And, hypothetically, let’s assume that it’s only sold at Apple’s iBookstore, where Apple takes 30% of each sale. Each download yeilds $2.10. I’m going to have to sell 72 copes of this ebook before I begin to see profits. That break-even number is going to grow as the book is sold through venues that take more than 30% per transaction.
If I sell 100 ebooks, I make a profit of sixty bucks.
So how many am I going to sell?
That’s impossible to know. One way to guesstimate the response to an offering of merchandise is to look at the number of daily unique visitors to your Web site and assume that a small percentage of them will actively support such an offering. What percent? My thinking is that it’s up to you and your Community Building. But for the sake of argument, let’s do a little math…
When I’m making these kinds of decisions for myself, I always assume a smaller percentage of participants. I veer closer to 1% in my own projections. I’ll even go closer to 0.5% for something — like an ebook — that has very little to offer that can’t be found on my Web site for free.
So, if I were doing the math on this, I’d estimate (with all things, like Community Building and quality of comic) being set aside for the sake of the hypothetical, that our imaginary comic would have to have about 14,400 daily uniques to expect to break even on this deal… not make a significant profit, mind you, but break even.
Does that mean you’d need 14,400 daily uniques to make Graphicly a good choice for you? Heck no. I’m just walking you through the thought process that I use to determine if such a thing is right for me. I ask myself how strongly my community has been supporting me recently. I gauge whether the merchandise has a strong perceived value. I try to determine my chances at blowing past the break-even point and into serious profit.
And then I take a leap of faith.
Here’s what you’re being offered: You upload once, work a self-service app, and distribute your ebook across several platforms. The price is $150-$250.
In my opinion, Graphicly is a solid choice for a webcartoonist with a very large, supportive readership who can’t afford to divert time away from comics to process eBooks across a wide array platforms. If this isn’t you, my opinion is that you’re better off doing it yourself.
Here’s the first of several “Three to Get Ready” Hotseats. The rules are simple. I go to your site, post the three most recent updates below and list one thing I like and one thing I don’t. Members are selcome to discuss the points I make or to post their own thoughts.
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Q: If you had a chance to do it all over again (i.e. launch a new strip online from the ground up with no prior experience or name recognition but still retaining the knowledge you’ve gained over the years), what would you do differently? What would you do the same? (I realize updating frequently and consistently is a top priority, so that goes without saying). What mistakes did you make that you learned from? What do you wish you had done sooner?
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I wanted to share with you an experiment I’m doing with my comic, and hopefully provide a little spark that might apply to your approach to your webcomic.
I’m using my buffer to my advantage by creating a digital download of this entire month’s comics for my readers. I’m allowing it to be downloaded for an introductory price of $1.50. Instead of offering a download of material I’ve already released, this project offers interested readers a chance to read ahead through the entire month — without ads.
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With 108 Webcomics.com members responding, we have an interesting look at two of the third-rail topics in Webcomics — Pageviews and Income.
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Get out your calendar and start circling dates. It’s time to do a little webcomics planning.
Business
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It’s high among the unwritten laws of webcomics. You never share your pageviews, and you never share your income. But it occurred to me that these pools are tailor-made for anonymous reporting of data. So I figured I’d float out the Big Two: Pageviews and Annual Income. Please be advised, I have no way of tracking responses, so your answers will be completely secret.
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As many of you know, I have spent the entirety of my career in Webcomics balancing that, my family life, and a “day job” (actually, a night job) at the Philadelphia Daily News.
Last month, the company announced layoffs, and — despite my 14 years’ seniority — the chances of my getting cut were pretty good. The day after they announced the layoffs, the company also announced a plan to combine the newsrooms of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily News — switching to a “24/7” news organization that would be staffed around the clock.The content you are trying to access is only available to members.
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