Re: do you claim everything?
A couple of things are going on here.
The paper gives the club a way to have "plausible denialbilty" they have a paper record to back up your claim you made to them that made X when you were and more importantly they knew or should have known that you were really making 10 times that much. So it goes a long way in covering their ass with the IRS.
As far as you claiming the full amount, you should, but you will be pressured to claim a minimum amount. The other girls are not going want the clubs records to be consistenly showing you making 400 dollars a night when they are making 40, especially when in case of an audit of them or the club or both an examination of their bank and credit card records showing all you girls spending the same amount of money.
The other pressure will be from the club, melonie has talked about this in the past, basically the more you make the more it costs them for various witholdings that they are required to pay. I beleived she described it as "the club lies and all the dancers swear to it."
Re: do you claim everything?
i think i'm well covered with that- i have no bank account. i live in a roach infested slum with quite a few people. my car is older than me and backfires. but i want to claim more so i can spend my money on a ba, fix my car, invest my money and buy a trailer without causing a red flag to go up. i think it would be better for me in the long run. most girls only work 1-3 days a week and have second jobs. i dont. i work 4-5 days a week. i think it would be in my benefit to claim more.
Re: do you claim everything?
i have a joint bank account with my mother. there's quite a bit of money in there, but SHE put that money in there with a check. my accountant said that doesnt matter- that's $ she gave me. i'm paying 1,100 dollars. i didnt work much this year and really dont have much i own.
Re: do you claim everything?
You'll need to be a bit careful where the club and other dancers are concerned in regard to reporting your actual earnings, or more than the $40-$50 other girls are writing down for that matter. While what you would be doing is the legal thing to do according to the IRS, in the real world you risk pissing off the clubowner. The reason for this is that the clubowner is required by the state to pay workmen's comp etc (assuming that you are working in a club where the dancers get paid an hourly base rate by the club) and that these payments are proportional to the amount of income each dancer reports. So if you report 10 times as much earnings, the club will have to shell out 10 times as much money to the state.
The other risk is that the IRS computers love to compare reported earnings from different people who work in the same job classification (in this case entertainer) in the same zip code. If you accurately report your income as say $50,000 per year, and the other dancers are reporting $10,000 per year plus straight job earnings, it may raise an eyebrow at the IRS resulting in a possible audit. You're basically in a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' no-win situation.