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Carly Crawford is a tax preparer (Enrolled Agent, to be exact), lifelong theatre person, and online business manager with a penchant for cheesy carbs, cross stitching, and books of all kinds. Carly lives in Memphis, where she loves the heat and humidity and basically lives on her screen porch.

Carly graduated from UNC Asheville in 2009 with a degree in Drama and Literature, and spent the last 10 years pretending to be small children onstage, most notably Peter Pan, Pinkalicious, and Junie B. Jones (all multiple times). She also earned a Master’s in Arts Administration from Savannah College of Art and Design, learning how to turn her make believe into a functioning business.

In 2017, she began her work as a tax preparer as well as fulfilling the requirements to become an Enrolled Agent. In her practice, she is compassionate, honest, and knowledgeable. When she’s not preparing and filing your taxes, reconciling your books, or designing your next workbook/ebook, Carly is probably reading while cuddling her pup, Rocky, playing board games with her wife, Nikki, or stubbing her toes on things because she’s inordinately clumsy. She likes lists in threes.

What makes you uniquely qualified to discuss financial and artistic freedom for musicians?

“As a lifelong creative who grew up in the theatre world and still works in the creative sphere, one of the reasons that I started my practice was to work with people who didn’t fit the mold of the traditional clients for traditional tax preparers.

I have the lived experience of a full-time creative making quite less than full-time money and trying to make everything work while figuring out complicated tax situations.“

Why is financial literacy among musicians important to you?

“It’s important to me that people understand WHY they’re paying the taxes they’re paying and where the numbers are coming from.

I think demystifying the tax code is important because there is so much fear built up around taxes and there’s next-to-no education about them besides “everyone has to do them.” That’s nonsense! We deserve knowledge.“

What is one piece of advice you would impart on the audience?

“I don’t know if this is so much advice, but I would love for everyone to understand that taxes are a bit like a game of Kerplunk – when you move one piece, everything else shifts accordingly.

I see a lot of ads by a lot of major corporations that offer tax “solutions” that are really misleading, because they play into the lack of knowledge that people have about how deductions or business expenses truly affect a tax return’s bottom line.”

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Thanks for listening and keep thriving!