Brand deal money is the income line that surprises creators the most at tax time.
Not because the rules are complicated, but because the threshold for getting a 1099 changed in 2026, and a lot of creators assume that if a brand does not send them a form, the income is not taxable.
That assumption costs people money every April.
This is the walk-through we use with creator clients on how are brand deals taxed, what changed in 2026, what to do about gifted product, and the deductions worth tracking against brand income through the year.
How Does the IRS Treat Brand Deal Money?
Brand deal income is self-employment income, reported on Schedule C of your personal tax return.
The IRS treats it the same way it treats any other income from a business you operate: you report the gross revenue, you deduct your ordinary and necessary business expenses, and you pay regular income tax plus self-employment tax (15.3%, Social Security and Medicare) on the net profit.
There is no special tax category for influencers or creators. The mechanics are the same as a freelance designer or a consultant.
If you operate through an LLC, the income still flows through to your personal return via Schedule C (single-member LLC) or Schedule K-1 (multi-member LLC or S-corp election). The entity wrapping does not change the underlying tax treatment of the income, only how it is reported.
Is Brand Deal Income Under $2,000 Still Taxable?
Yes. The 2026 change everyone is talking about is the 1099-NEC reporting threshold, which got raised from $600 to $2,000 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. That changes when a payer has to send you a form, not whether the income is taxable.
Every dollar of brand deal income is taxable, whether you get a 1099 or not. The form is a reporting convenience for the IRS. Your obligation to report and pay tax on the income exists regardless.
If you are doing $1,800 brand deals expecting they fall under the radar in 2026, that is the assumption to fix. Our piece on 1099 tax mistakes content creators make walks through the most common ones we see.
What About Gifted Products and PR Packages?
A gifted product is also taxable income. If a brand sends you a $500 camera bag with the expectation that you create content with it, the IRS treats that $500 as income at fair market value.
The unboxing PR package you posted on Stories last week? Same thing.
The good news is that if you genuinely use the gifted product for content creation, you can usually deduct its fair market value as a business expense, which washes out to a net of zero. The deduction requires that the item meet the ordinary-and-necessary standard for your business and that you keep documentation. PR packages with a clear business use, tracked at fair market value, mostly net out.
Items you keep purely for personal use are taxable income without an offsetting deduction.
What Deductions Should Every Creator Be Tracking?
The categories that show up on almost every creator Schedule C: equipment (cameras, lighting, microphones, computers, accessories), software (editing suites, scheduling tools, accounting platforms), home office (if you have a dedicated content workspace), internet and phone (business-use portion), website hosting, courses and education in your niche, business meals (50% deductible), mileage (for shoots, in-person brand work, or industry events), professional services (CPA, lawyer, agent commission), and contracted help (editors, virtual assistants, graphic designers).
The Schedule C line items are straightforward. The hard part is tracking them through the year instead of trying to reconstruct twelve months in April. We wrote a separate piece on influencer tax deductions for 2025 that goes deeper into the deductible categories specific to the creator economy.
Equipment, Section 179, and bonus depreciation
Equipment purchases above a certain threshold technically have to be depreciated over their useful life. The IRS lets you skip the multi-year depreciation schedule and deduct the full cost in the year of purchase using Section 179, with a 2026 cap of $2,560,000 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (which no creator we know is hitting). The practical version: buy the camera, claim the full deduction this year, move on.
Bonus depreciation is the other path for the same purchases. Both work; the rules differ in edge cases. For most creator equipment buys, Section 179 is the cleaner option. The piece on the OBBB tax bill we put out covers a few of the 2026 changes worth knowing as a creator.
Let’s look at an example: a $45,000 brand deal for a year
Let’s look at an example.
We had a TikTok creator close out 2025 with $45,000 in brand deal income, mostly through three campaigns plus a stream of smaller deals. Gross income on Schedule C: $45,000. Tracked deductions through the year: $8,200 (camera upgrade and ring light $2,400, editing software subscriptions $480, home office at the $5 per square foot simplified method $1,500, internet/phone business portion $720, mileage and one out-of-state shoot $1,100, accounting service $900, courses and conferences $1,100). Net business profit: $36,800.
Self-employment tax on that net: about $5,200. Federal and state income tax on the net at their bracket: another $7,500 or so. The deductions saved roughly $2,300 in combined tax versus the no-tracking version.
The bigger takeaway with the creator was not the dollar amount this year.
It was that the system they set up to track expenses through 2026 would save them another $3,000 to $4,000 in future years, because they were finally catching all the line items they had been missing.
Home office, vehicle, and the deductions that get audited
Two deductions get scrutinized more than the rest.
Home office: the simplified method is $5 per square foot up to 300 square feet ($1,500 max). The space has to be used regularly and exclusively for business, which means the corner of the dining table you film at sometimes does not count.
Vehicle mileage: you can use the IRS standard mileage rate or actual expenses, but only the business-use portion of either, and you need a mileage log that holds up under scrutiny.
Then there is the audit favorite: clothing and makeup. The rule is that personal-use items are not deductible. Pieces purchased specifically for a sponsored campaign and used only in the content can sometimes qualify, but the line is narrow and well-documented.
We wrote a piece on whether influencers can write off clothes and makeup that follows the actual rule, with examples.
Where this all goes next
Brand deal taxes are straightforward in theory, but the money creators leave behind by not tracking expenses well, or assuming small deals fall off the books, adds up faster than most people expect.
We work with creators every day on getting the bookkeeping side clean so tax season is a paperwork exercise rather than a panic.
Reach out if your brand deal year is shaping up, and the tracking side is not where you want it.
We will pressure-test the rest of your influencer taxes setup while we are at it.
If you liked this one, you might also like our walk-through of how much influencers set aside for taxes in 2026, which covers the quarterly-estimate side of the same setup.
Until next time!
About the BizBud Team
BizBud is a tax and accounting firm specializing in content creators, influencers, YouTubers, digital nomads, photographers, videographers, and foreign founders setting up US businesses. Founded by Cameron Botes, the team includes CPAs and tax advisors with prior experience at PwC, Deloitte, and EY. We work with hundreds of clients across the U.S. and around the world.
