(as taken from Financially Savvy Freelance Artist 01
The Philippine government’s revenue collection is really getting its act together. Plugging all holes in its coffers. Aside from businesses, they’ve been going after celebrities, dentists, doctors, and lawyers – hellbent in collecting taxes.
We who are freelance artists – will the BIR come after us too? We who barely earn enough to make a living?
I think we who are freelance artists don’t usually talk about these things. Animators, comic book artists, painters… we’d rather not talk about tax. At large we’d rather not talk about our financial futures or long term goals. Instead of educating young artists on pricing and fair compensation — we hide how much they can earn.
I used to think business was for people who didn’t have any other clear interests in high school. But quite frankly – business acumen is knowing how to use the language of money.
So if an artist wishes to make a living… to avoid starving… he/she needs to at LEAST get comfortable listening to the language of money. One of the worst things we can do is just to tune ourselves out when someone talks the talk of money. Especially if that person is talking to educate us on the matter.
The difficulty for artists like me in the Philippines to get into business is that there isn’t much of an industry here to support local game development, comics, and feature film animation – (stuff I personally like to get involved in .) The best paying work of that nature has to come from abroad. So what now becomes an efficient way to do business as an artist in the Philippines? Receiving work from clients abroad.
Commercials then?