CSotD: What it’s come to, and what it hasn’t
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Today's Big Nate provides a cliffhanger to which every wiseass and class clown can relate.
I used to draw/write little fake newspapers full of parody news pieces that weren't terribly masked in terms of whom I was spearing, and they got passed around a lot.
The only blow-back I recall was a story senior year about the local Ranger School going coed (which it hadn't yet), with the first three female students to be a trio of my classmates who dated Ranger School students. The fictional comment from the head of the school was that he expected the transition to be smooth since having the three of them in the dorm would not seem particularly unusual.
They eventually admitted it was funny.
The stuff about teachers cut a good deal deeper, but, fortunately, never wound up in their hands.
This also reminds me of an eighth grade English teacher who would put up an array of stock photos from which we were supposed to select an essay topic, and my buddy Chris and I competed to come up with the most tangential, absurd tie-ins.
He earned a major victory when a picture of a puppy in a gift box sparked a story, read to the entire class, about Christmas morning and asphyxiation.
On the other hand, she only tut-tutted his piece. When I responded to the writing prompt "Describe a 4-H activity" with a detailed, accurate "process essay" on mucking out a horse stall, the resulting classroom hilarity got me sent to the office.
So I guess I won.
We'll see how Nate does.
And I'll get back to things that cartoonists might worry about.
First, however, I'm overdue in noting On The Fastrack's continuing story arc about Dethany's raven visiting the Tower of London. It's been interesting to see Dethany, introduced as a minor character, take over the strip, and now Lenore is also becoming a major factor.
I've found this particular arc interesting because I had heard the legend that the British Empire will continue for as long as the ravens remain at the Tower, which seemed romantic until I visited and learned that they clip the ravens' wings to keep them from flying away.
I'd have been more shocked at the time, except that I had just been at my Aunt Anne's farm in Monaghan and stood on a hillside looking over the hedge into Northern Ireland, so it seemed perfectly consistent to me.
Apparently, there's a similar legend about the apes of Gibraltar, who are, therefore, kept in cages.
So we'll have our moment of zen early today:
Don't Panic … Yet
David Fitzsimmons offers this Thanksgiving piece as the House and Senate rush to pass tax reform before (a) year's end and (b) anyone has a chance to read it.
We have to pass the bill so that we can find out what is in it, they tell us.
And I hate to seem cynical, so let me offer this parallel: The best nurses I know never tell a kid "it won't hurt" when they can honestly say, "yes, it's going to hurt, but only for a minute and it really matters."
I would accept a similar assurance from Congress, with a little more detail about how much it's going to hurt and why it really matters.
But their the "try it, you'll like it" assurances are, from what we can already tell, fake news.
I'll likely end up losing on this, both for the reasons I outlined previously, and because, apparently, the nature of sole proprietorships is going to change, such that I'll have to pay 25% on the income generated, rather than simply folding it into my extremely modest income, of which it is the major portion.
So it hurts, but it really matters, because sole proprietorships that make millions are paying 39.5% and we need to give the wealthy a tax cut.
Thus, while Phil Hands worries about dumping the GOP Deficit on our kids, the immediate hit will be taken by the old folks at home, and particularly the old folks in the home.
Well, all the old folks except the rich old folks.
However, the fact that I'm apparently going to get screwed is not a reason to oppose a plan that might benefit the rest of the country.
I also don't want to look for problems that may not be there, and my colleague in the writing-about-comics business, Tom Spurgeon, may have found a threat that doesn't exist, in a posting that appears to conflate personal exemptions deductions with business costs. (Edited: See comments)
I would assume that the majority of cartoonists and writers operate as sole proprietors, and that only a small slice of the most financially successful are incorporated and pay themselves a salary.
Which is a good tax strategy, assuming you make enough regular income to set an actual, regular salary for yourself.
I don't think you can get away with setting a salary of "whatever's left over," which is how it works at my level.
However, at any level, personal expenses are over here and business expenses are over there, and I've seen nothing in either GOP tax proposal that would change the fact that business expenses are listed on Schedule C as part of establishing your income.
The IRS won't let you continuously lose money on a business that has never shown a profit, so you can't sell a couple of cartoons for a total of $250 and then deduct your paper, ink, scanner and trip to ComicCon, or, at least, if you do it for three out of five years, the IRS will declare your cartooning a hobby and not let you take any of it off.
But if you can live by your wits, your expenses are deductible.
There's plenty else to worry over in this plan, but the central tax issue for creators will remain the same:
Before something can be deductible from your income,
you need income from which to deduct it.
— Then-Wife
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