The part of the job that
isn’t the craft.

Nobody grants you the title

If you detailed a car last Saturday and the owner paid you, you were a sole proprietor on Saturday. There is no form to file, no fee to pay, and no moment where someone tells you it has started. In the eyes of the IRS you are a business the first time you take money with the intent of making a profit, and everything that follows in this guide already applies to you.

That is the good news and the whole problem at once. The default costs nothing and takes no time, which is why almost everyone starts there — and the default also means there is no line anywhere between you and the work. Your business does not own the polisher; you do. Your business did not agree to that job; you did. And if something goes badly wrong on a car, the claim is not against a company. It is against you, your savings, and in the worst case your house.

What a sole proprietorship actually is

A sole proprietorship is not an entity. It is the absence of one. There is no separate tax return: your business income and expenses go on Schedule C, attached to the same Form 1040 you already file, and the profit flows onto your personal return. There is no separate legal person either, which is the part that matters when a car is on your lift.

Liability

Unlimited and personal. A judgment against the business is a judgment against you.

Taxes

Schedule C plus Schedule SE, filed with your personal return. No separate business return.

Cost to start

Nothing, unless your city or county wants a business licence — many do.

Paperwork

Almost none, which is exactly why it hides how much personal risk you are carrying.

When an LLC starts to earn its keep

A single-member LLC does one thing well: it puts a legal wall between the business and everything you own personally. It does not change your taxes at all by default — the IRS treats it as a disregarded entity, meaning you still file Schedule C exactly as before. People form them for the wall, not for a deduction, and anyone who tells you an LLC will lower your tax bill is describing a different decision.

The wall is also conditional. It holds when the business is genuinely separate: its own bank account, its own records, contracts signed in the business's name, no paying the mortgage out of the business account. Run everything through one account and a court can decide the separation was decorative.

Rough guidance, not a rule: if you are taking custody of customers' cars, working on high-value examples, or your annual profit is into five figures, the few hundred dollars a state charges is cheap. If you detail three cars a month for people you know, it may not be yet.

The S-corp question, answered honestly

Sooner or later someone at a show will tell you to elect S-corp status and save a fortune. The mechanism is real: an S-corp lets you split your income into a reasonable salary — which pays employment tax — and distributions, which do not. On high profits, that saves meaningful money.

The costs are also real, and they arrive whether the savings do or not: payroll processing, a separate business tax return, a defensible salary you have to justify, and an accountant who is no longer optional. The savings scale with profit; the costs mostly do not. Which is why the conventional threshold sits somewhere north of roughly $50,000–$80,000 of net profit, and why the honest answer is that this is a question for a CPA with your actual numbers in front of them, not for a guide.

The tax nobody warns you about

When you were an employee, your paycheque quietly lost 7.65% to Social Security and Medicare, and your employer paid a matching 7.65% you never saw. Self-employed, you are both halves. That is self-employment tax, it runs at 15.3%, and it is charged on your business profit before any income tax is calculated at all.

It is the single most common reason a first-year specialist gets a tax bill they did not expect. They budgeted for income tax. Nobody mentioned the other one.

The rate

15.3% — 12.4% Social Security plus 2.9% Medicare.

What it is charged on

92.35% of your net profit, not the gross you invoiced. The 7.65% haircut approximates the employer half an employee never gets taxed on.

The Social Security cap

The 12.4% portion applies only up to $184,500 of earnings for 2026. Above that, only the 2.9% Medicare portion continues — uncapped.

The floor

You owe it once net self-employment earnings reach $400 for the year. That is not a typo, and it is not per client.

The consolation

Half of what you pay is deductible against your income tax, and it comes off before you even get to itemising.

Quarterly estimated payments

Nobody is withholding anything for you any more, so the IRS asks you to pay as you go, four times a year. Miss them and you owe an underpayment penalty on top of the tax — it is calculated like interest, so it is not catastrophic, but it is entirely avoidable.

For the 2026 tax year the deadlines fall on 15 April 2026, 15 June 2026, 15 September 2026, and 15 January 2027. When a date lands on a weekend or holiday it moves to the next business day. Most states with an income tax run their own parallel schedule, usually on the same dates.

The deduction worth knowing by name

The qualified business income deduction — Section 199A — lets most pass-through business owners deduct up to 20% of qualified business income before income tax is applied. It was scheduled to expire and has since been made permanent, which means it is now worth building into your planning rather than treating as a windfall.

It has income thresholds and phase-outs, and it does not reduce self-employment tax. But at ordinary profit levels for a specialist trade it is a real reduction in the income tax half of your bill, and it is one of the reasons the effective rate on self-employment income is lower than the headline numbers suggest.

Deductions specific to this trade

The rule underneath all of these is that an expense must be ordinary and necessary for your business, and that you must be able to prove it. A shoebox of faded receipts is not proof; a bank statement from the account you only use for the business very nearly is.

Mileage or actual costs

Two methods, pick one per vehicle and understand you are largely stuck with the consequence. The standard mileage rate is simpler and often better for a mobile detailer; actual costs can win for a transporter with a real truck. Either way the log is the deduction — without it, neither method survives scrutiny.

Tools and equipment

A polisher, a lift, a paint-depth gauge, a compressor. Larger purchases can often be expensed immediately rather than depreciated over years, which is worth a conversation with your accountant in a year when you buy something significant.

Home office

Legitimate if a space is used regularly and exclusively for business. 'Exclusively' is the word that disqualifies most people — the kitchen table does not count.

Training and certification

Coatings certification, marque-specific training, trade shows. Education that maintains or improves skills in your existing business generally qualifies.

Insurance premiums

Business policies are deductible. The self-employed health insurance deduction is separate and works differently — ask about it specifically.

Materials consumed on a job

Compounds, pads, film, fluids, consumables. Track these per job and you will also discover what your real margin is, which is usually more useful than the deduction.

Three routes, one directory

Work reaches specialists on Fully Sorted three ways, and they suit different kinds of business.

The directory

An owner finds you by trade and location, reads your profile, and contacts you. You quote, you agree terms, you get paid directly. Nothing passes through us.

Fixed-price gigs

A productised service with a defined scope and an upfront price, bookable without a quote. Best for repeatable work — a maintenance detail, a pre-purchase inspection, a photo set.

Routed work

Owners who ask us directly for a specialist. This goes to people whose profiles are complete and whose past clients said the right things.

You set your prices. That is not a courtesy

Fully Sorted does not set your rates, does not tell you how to do the work, and does not own your relationship with a client who found you here. If they come back to you directly next year, that is how it is supposed to work.

That is partly a stance and partly a structural fact: a marketplace that dictates price and method starts to look, legally, like an employer rather than a referral. Keeping rates in your hands keeps you an independent business — which is what you are, and what both of us need you to remain.

What it costs

A directory listing is free during the founding period, and the founding cohort keeps that. There is no commission on work you find here, and no buyer's premium taken out of what an owner has to spend on the job.

Card payment for fixed-price bookings is rolling out rather than live — until a provider is switched on for payouts, a booking arrives as an enquiry and you invoice the owner directly. When it does switch on, the processing fee is the honest cost of taking a card, and it will be stated plainly rather than buried.

What actually gets you booked

The profiles that convert are not the ones with the most services listed. They are the ones that make an owner feel safe handing over something irreplaceable.

A real photograph of you or your premises rather than a logo. Specific work on specific cars, with the marque named. Evidence you carry the right insurance. A response time measured in hours rather than days — which, on a platform where response rate is visible, compounds. And a scope so clear the owner already knows what they are buying before they message you.

Write down the scope before the keys change hands

Almost every dispute in this trade is a disagreement about scope that surfaced at invoicing. The owner remembers a conversation about 'sorting the paint'. You remember quoting a single-stage correction. Both of you are being honest and there is nothing to point at.

A written authorisation does not need to be a contract drafted by a lawyer. It needs to say what work is authorised, what it costs, what happens if you find something you did not expect, and when payment is due. An email the client replies 'yes, go ahead' to is vastly better than nothing, and in some states a written estimate before repair work begins is not optional at all.

Scope

What you are doing, in specific terms. Name the process, not the outcome.

Price and what triggers a change

The number, and the rule for what happens when the job turns out to be worse than it looked.

Timeline

Including what happens if parts do not arrive — which they will not.

Deposit

For anything with materials or a long lead time. Half up front is normal and nobody serious objects.

Condition on arrival

Photographs, dated, before you touch anything. Every panel, the wheels, the interior, the odometer.

Storage after completion

The date free storage ends and the daily rate after it. Write it down before you need it.

When a client goes quiet

It happens, and it happens most on the jobs that ran longest. Sequence, in order: a polite invoice, a reminder at fourteen days that references your storage terms, a written demand, and only then anything formal.

Mechanic's liens exist in every state and the rules are unforgiving about notice periods and paperwork. They are also not a first move — a lien is slow, it costs money, and it ends the relationship permanently. Know that the option exists, and structure your deposits so that you rarely need it.

Books, kept the boring way

One business account. Every payment in, every expense out, nothing personal. Reconcile monthly rather than annually — an hour a month is genuinely less painful than a weekend in April, and it means you find out you are underpricing in March rather than the following year.

Keep records for at least three years; longer is safer, and digital copies of receipts are fine. What you are protecting is not just the deduction — it is your ability to answer a question quickly and stop the conversation there.