The Tax-Ready Freelancer: Keep More of Every Invoice with a Simple Year-Round System

John Tranthem Jr. is an Enrolled Agent — the federal credential held by tax professionals licensed to represent taxpayers before the IRS — and a former full-time freelancer who has spent more than fifteen years helping independent workers keep more of what they earn. After a decade as a freelance copywriter and brand consultant, he watched the same pattern repeat in almost every conversation with fellow freelancers: extraordinary work, unpredictable income, and a tax bill that arrived like weather — dreaded, inevitable, and nearly always discoverable too late.

He earned his Enrolled Agent credential and built a tax practice devoted entirely to the self-employed, where the center of his work became teaching clients a simple, durable relationship with the calendar and with their own money. That practice is the direct source of this book. The year-round system in these pages is the system he watches work in his clients' lives, month after month, across hundreds of tax seasons.

John writes and teaches because he believes tax readiness is a form of professional freedom — the confidence to take the next project, set the next rate, or take a real break without fear of what April will bring. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his family, volunteers as a mentor with SCORE, and leads regular workshops at local small-business development centers. He maintains that his favorite tax season is any one spent helping someone realize they had nothing to fear.