Yay, Taxes: Minding your Own Business
Reflection on audits and enlightenment
by Darby Orr
It was the summer of 1995. I had just moved into a small studio guest house in the valley, leaving not only my bungalow on Beachwood Canyon but the publishing deal that afforded me my fleeting moment of Hollywood life. I was wallowing in the unfairness of the music industry, believing I had reached the depth of life’s cruelties, when I opened my mailbox to find a letter from the IRS announcing the impending audit of my music business.
Honestly, for the six years up to that point I’d considered myself a songwriter and producer, not a business. Now the IRS was asking me to prove that I was a legitimate business entity. An audit. It was simultaneously daunting and a double-dog-dare to validate my efforts.
At the time of my audit, my receipts and paperwork were scattered haphazardly in boxes and envelopes. I wasn’t really sure if I even had crucial information the IRS requested. I didn’t have a CPA that understood the music business.
The auditor came to my tiny guest house and sat uncomfortably on the one chair I had kept from the move. She asked me hundreds of questions. She unfolded and looked skeptically at every receipt I produced. It was a long stressful process. Three weeks of meetings.
After nearly a month, she quietly left, and a few weeks later I received a letter stating that my tax filings were fine. I WAS a music business.
It turns out – what I learned through the audit process – is that songwriting is the same as other businesses. There’s income and expenses; travel, gear, and supplies; postage, insurance, merchandise, advertising, outside services, phone service, parking fees, membership dues, and websites. (Okay, in 1995 there wasn’t a website.)
The fun of the gig is I get to conjure magic in melody and words out of pure ether, but the job – artistic or not – also means being organized.
Now I use spreadsheets, email folders, and ledgers. I stay current in my records updating weekly or monthly instead of scavenger hunting once a year. Whatever is computerized is backed-up regularly. I’ve hired a good CPA who understands the life of an artistic entrepreneur: she’s been guiding me wisely for twenty-five years through the ever-changing landscape of tax law. She understands what I do even if my parents never did.
From the audit I learned that whether you’re an aspiring or professional songwriter/producer, treat your creative efforts as a business. And it taught me to get organized.
Over the years, though, I’ve found that creating organized and up-to-date records isn’t just to help the IRS understand my business. It also helps me better understand my own business: Where are the sources of income that best reflect my efforts? What are my expenses and how can they be refined for their best value?
It’s not necessarily fun to crunch the numbers but it can be enlightening and even career shifting to see the map of a year through numbers and miles. And on April 15, with last year’s filings behind me and a stable foundation of systems set up, I can sit back, close my eyes, and conjure up that (hopefully) next perfect chorus.
DARBY ORR is a composer, producer, and yoga educator facilitating the intersection of mindfulness, embodied awareness, sound, and creativity.
As a composer Darby spent several years as a staff writer for Sony Music. He has written and produced music for CBS Records, Atlantic Records, Mercedes Benz, Ford, Universal Studios, Disney, Chuck E. Cheese, Time Warner, Buena Vista Pictures, a slew of TV shows & commercials, online games, and has composed hundreds of songs in every imaginable genre for music libraries. In 2021 he released Ambient Meditation: Adrift in the Glimmer and in 2022 Susurrus, A tribute to Harold Budd.
As a producer Darby has overseen the journey of countless songs, albums, and tracks for sync. He has an ear for hearing a composition’s emotional essence and a production clarity to bring forth that essence to bond the music to the listener.
While navigating the entertainment business landscape, Darby discovered yoga. This has led to twenty plus years of practice and over seventeen years of teaching yoga as a mindfulness tool to foster deeper more expansive creativity. He teaches workshops and retreats focusing on enriching the creative spirit with his wife, singer-songwriter Arielle Silver.