What to Bring to Your Tax Preparer When You're Self-Employed
Tax forms are showing up. Your preparer has either already emailed you or is about to. And if you're like a lot of the self-employed self-care providers I work with, (where are my mental health therapists, estheticians, and body workers at?!) this is the part of the year when the paperwork starts feeling hard to keep track of.
Here's a walkthrough of what your tax preparer actually needs from you, what self-care providers most often miss, and how to set yourself up so next February feels different.
The 1099s coming in to you
If you earned income outside of a W-2 job in 2025, you should be receiving (or have already received) some combination of these:
1099-NEC. Sent by clients or businesses that paid you $600 or more for contracted work. Studios you taught at, group practices you contracted with, brands you collaborated with.
1099-K. Sent by payment processors and platforms (Stripe, Square, PayPal, Venmo, Mindbody, Jane, SimplePractice, Acuity) when payment volume crosses certain thresholds. The threshold has been moving in recent years, so more 1099-Ks are showing up than people expect.
1099-MISC. Less common for self-care providers, but it sometimes shows up for things like rent paid to you or other miscellaneous income.
Two things to check on each 1099:
The amount should roughly match what your bookkeeping shows for that payer or processor. If a 1099-K reports $40,000 in gross processed payments but your books show $32,000 in revenue from that platform, that's a discrepancy worth understanding before tax time. Refunds, fees, and chargebacks often explain the gap.
The taxpayer ID information should be correct. If a 1099 has the wrong name, EIN, or social security number, flag it with the payer before it gets reported to the IRS.
Your books, summarized
The single most useful document your tax preparer wants from you is a clean Profit & Loss statement for the full year, ideally broken out by month. If you're using QuickBooks Online, generating this is a few clicks. If you're using a spreadsheet, you need a year-end summary by income and expense category.
If you've never sent a P&L to a tax preparer before, it's worth knowing what they're going to do with it. How to Read Your P&L and Use It to Plan Your Year walks through what each section means and how the numbers translate at tax time.
Alongside the P&L, your preparer typically wants:
A balance sheet (especially if you have business assets, loans, or are an S-corp or partnership)
A list of any major asset purchases over the year (equipment, vehicles)
All 1099s you received
Any 1099-NECs you issued (more on that below)
A mileage log if you use a personal vehicle for business
Home office details if you claim one (square footage of the office, total square footage of the home)
If you have a bookkeeper, they're putting most of this together for you. If you don't, this is the part that takes self-employed folks the longest.
Things self-care providers commonly miss
A few categories that tend to slip through:
Continuing education and professional development. Workshops, certifications, books, training programs, conference fees. If it maintains or improves a skill required for your work, it's likely deductible. Self-care providers tend to have substantial CE expenses (yoga teachers meeting their Yoga Alliance requirements, therapists pursuing modality certifications, estheticians keeping up with licensure) and forget to capture them.
Software subscriptions. Booking platforms, accounting software, electronic health records, scheduling tools, payment processors. These auto-renew on personal cards a lot of folks haven't separated yet, which is part of why they get missed.
Mileage. If you drive between locations (multiple studios, client homes, your office and a continuing ed event), that's deductible at the standard mileage rate. Miles need to be logged contemporaneously; a "best guess" doesn't hold up if anyone ever asks. Apps like MileIQ make this easier going forward.
Home office. If part of your home is used regularly and exclusively for business, you may have a home office deduction available. It's a deduction that self-employed people qualify for, and it requires some specific math and documentation that your tax preparer will want.
Supplies and small equipment. Massage oils, yoga props, hand tools, linens. If you use it in your work, it's likely deductible.
The list of common categorization errors is long enough to deserve its own post. 3 Common Bookkeeping Mistakes Small Business Owners Make covers the patterns that cause real headaches at tax time.
The 1099s you may have needed to issue
If you paid a contractor $600 or more in 2025 (a sub-teacher, an editor, a graphic designer, a virtual assistant, a video editor), you were supposed to issue them a 1099-NEC by January 31. If you missed that deadline, talk to your tax preparer about how to handle it. Penalties exist, but they get smaller the sooner you file.
Going forward: collect a Form W-9 from any contractor before you pay them. That single habit makes your life so much easier come January.
If your books are not in a state to hand off
Plenty of self-employed folks land in February realizing the bookkeeping never quite happened. If that's where you are, get your records in order for your preparer this year, and set up the habits that prevent the same situation next year.
What to track going forward
If you want next February to feel different, three things matter most:
A separate business bank account. Personal and business transactions in the same account is the biggest source of bookkeeping pain.
Categorize transactions as they happen, not in bulk at year-end. Even a few minutes a week beats hours in March.
Reconcile your bank accounts monthly. This is the single bookkeeping habit that catches the most errors before they compound. Why You Should Reconcile Your Bank Accounts Every Month walks through what reconciliation actually does and why it matters.
These three things won't transform your books overnight, but they'll keep them functional as you work toward a more concrete, sustainable plan.
A quick note on what this post is not: tax advice. The rules around what's deductible, what counts as a business expense, and how a particular situation should be reported are specific to your circumstances. A qualified tax professional is the person to make those calls.
If your books are part of what's making tax time stressful, booking a free call is a low-stakes way to talk about whether bookkeeping support might help going forward.