Content Creator Taxes: The 5 Questions a CPA Gets Asked Most
By Garrett Alexander, CPA, Game On Financial
If you make money streaming, posting, or creating online, taxes probably weren't the part you signed up for. As a CPA who works with content creators every day, I get the same handful of questions over and over. Here are the five biggest ones, with straight answers to help you feel a little less lost before tax season hits.
A quick note before we start: this is general education, not personalized advice. Your situation has its own details, and the right answer often comes down to those details. When in doubt, talk to an accountant who knows the creator space.
1. Do I need an LLC as a content creator?
This is the question I hear most, and the short answer is: no, not for tax purposes.
To deduct your expenses or report your income, you do not need an LLC. A lot of creators rush out to form one thinking it unlocks write-offs, but it usually doesn't change your taxes at all. If you're the only owner (a single-member LLC), the IRS "disregards" the LLC and still has you report everything on Schedule C of your Form 1040, exactly as you would without one. Same income, same deductions, LLC or not.
There's one exception: if you have an LLC and make what's called an S election to be taxed as an S corporation. More on that in question five.
That said, there are good non-tax reasons to form an LLC:
A cleaner business bank account. An LLC makes it easier to open a dedicated account and keep business and personal money separate, which you want to do regardless.
Liability protection. If your business gets sued in the ordinary course of doing business, an LLC can help shield your personal assets, provided you're handling things correctly on the legal side.
So the honest answer to "do I need one?" is no, you don't necessarily need one. There are often real benefits to having one, but it's not the tax magic people assume it is.
2. Do I need to file a tax return?
This one shows up in a lot of forms (sometimes it's "what even are my taxes?"), but it usually boils down to a simple question: do I have to file?
The general rule for employment income is to compare your income to the standard deduction for the year. For the 2025 tax year (returns filed in 2026), the standard deduction is $15,750 for single filers. If your income falls under that amount, you generally aren't required to file. That number changes every year for inflation. It rises to $16,100 for 2026, so always check the current figure.
But there are two big caveats, and the second one matters a lot for creators.
You may want to file even when you don't have to. Say you earned $10,000 in wages and your employer withheld $1,000 for taxes. The standard deduction wipes out your tax on that $10,000, so you owe nothing, but you already paid in $1,000. The only way to get that back is to file and claim your refund.
Self-employment income changes the threshold entirely. If you have $400 or more in net self-employment income, the kind reported to you on a 1099 from Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, a brand deal, and so on, you're required to file, even if your total income is under the standard deduction. This trips up a ton of creators who have a part-time W-2 job plus creator income. If that's you, it's worth a quick conversation with a tax accountant to confirm where you stand.
3. What expenses can content creators deduct?
Before the list, there's one fork in the road that decides everything: is your content a business or a hobby?
Hobby: You report the income, but you don't get to deduct your expenses. The upside is it's not subject to self-employment tax. If you're making a couple hundred or a couple thousand dollars and not really trying to grow it, this might be you.
Business: You can deduct your expenses, which is the good part. The trade-off is that your profit is subject to self-employment tax. If you're operating in a business-like way and trying to grow, you're almost certainly a business.
For creators running a real business, here are common deductible expenses:
Electronics and gear: laptop, PC, console (PS5, Xbox), controllers, capture cards, microphone, camera, and the rest of your setup
Office setup: desk, chair, and the lighting you use to film
Supplies, internet, and utilities: note that internet and a portion of your utilities fall under the home office rules, which take a little extra calculation
Software and contractors: editing software, other subscriptions you rely on, and payments to editors or other freelancers
Subscriptions to other creators: I'll go to bat for this one. Subbing to channels in your space is genuinely networking and industry research. (To be clear, this isn't about hopping into someone's stream to self-promote. It's the normal, expected cost of being part of the community.)
The catch-all standard the IRS uses is whether an expense is ordinary and necessary for your business. Ordinary means it's common in your industry, and necessary means you need it to do the work. Everything in my own background while I film, the decor and the lighting, is deductible under that logic.
I wouldn't be a good accountant if I didn't add the disclaimer: almost every item above is "it depends." Most of the time these are deductible, but facts and circumstances matter, so check your specific situation with your advisor.
4. How should I track my income and expenses?
My recommendation: use real bookkeeping software like QuickBooks or Xero. Tracking income and expenses in one of these is straightforward, and it pays off enormously at tax time. When your books are already clean, filing is quick instead of a scramble.
Where it gets tricky is knowing what counts as deductible and what doesn't. That's exactly where an accountant earns their keep. We live in this software every day, and we're reading your books through a tax lens the whole time. Many accountants will also look at it from a financial-planning angle (cash flow forecasting and the like), though that's often an added service.
If you're truly bootstrapping and just getting started, you can begin with Microsoft Excel. Just know that as you grow you'll want to move off it, because spreadsheets lean on manual data entry, which invites errors. The goal is to have everything coded throughout the year so that when tax season arrives, we can close the books and file with very little friction.
5. What is an S corporation, and do I need one?
I could do a whole separate post on S corp vs. LLC, but here's the short version.
With a normal single-member LLC, you're a sole proprietor: your business income and expenses go on Schedule C, which is part of your personal 1040. An S corporation is a different animal. You take that LLC and make an S election (Form 2553) with the IRS, and now your business files its own return (Form 1120-S). That return produces a K-1, which you then carry onto your personal 1040. The income still ends up on your 1040. It's just no longer a literal part of it.
That structure comes with real administrative costs: two tax returns instead of one, required bookkeeping, a separate business bank account, and running payroll. It's not more "serious" than a Schedule C. It just requires these things, where a sole proprietor can sometimes get away without them (though I still recommend them).
So why do it? The main reason is self-employment tax. On a Schedule C, your entire net profit, say $50,000, is subject to self-employment tax at 15.3% (that's your Social Security and Medicare, a.k.a. FICA). With an S corp, the IRS treats you as both an owner and an employee:
As the owner, you can take money out as distributions, which aren't subject to self-employment tax (you still pay income tax on the profit).
As the employee, you pay yourself wages, which are subject to FICA.
You might be thinking, "Then I'll just pay myself entirely in distributions." The IRS already thought of that. You're required to pay yourself reasonable compensation as an employee before taking the rest as distributions.
Here's my honest take: plenty of S corps get set up that don't need to be, and they end up costing more in accounting and legal fees than they save. They're also more painful if you're ever audited. S corps aren't scary when done right. They're actually a clean way to separate things out. But you don't necessarily need one. If you're earning enough for an S corp to make sense, you'll likely already be having that conversation with an accountant, and a good one will flag it for you when the time is right.
The bottom line
Most of these answers come back to the same theme: there's rarely a one-size-fits-all rule, and the smart move is to build a relationship with an accountant who understands the creator world before you actually need one. That's the whole reason Game On Financial exists.
If you've got questions about your own setup, whether that's an LLC, deductions, bookkeeping, or an S corp, book a free call with our team and we'll help you sort it out.
Game On Financial provides tax, bookkeeping, and advisory services for streamers, YouTubers, and content creators. This article is for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for personalized tax advice. Tax laws change and every situation is different, so please consult a qualified tax professional about your specific circumstances.
