With tax season coming upon us, I decided to sit down with Amanda Mills of Loose Change, Inc. and capture some of the wisdom she's gained in over 20 years experience as a financial and business management consultant for artists.

The tax system can be hard on artists. Artists just don't fit into a typical career path of making a set amount of money and then increasing that slightly year-by-year.

Here are the 7 most important lessons I learned from speaking with Amanda about artists, money and taxes.

1. Make your passion into a business. Claiming to the world, the government and yourself that your art is a business is a hugely important step that requires courage and confidence. Reporting the income you generate from your art shows that you're taking your art and yourself seriously.

Actions: Consider the beliefs that are underlying your decision of whether or not to report your earnings as an artist. And by all means, consider hiring a professional like Amanda Mills to help you out.

Amanda's clients value her unique expertise and understanding of the arts because she takes them seriously. Other accountants might look at the small earnings of an artist and ask, "Why bother?" Amanda treats your identity and earnings as an artist with respect and gives them the attention they deserve.

2. Fund your passion with a supplemental job. A "day job" doesn't have to be something that makes you miserable. If it is, it's costing you a lot more than you're earning and you'd be better off finding something else.

Look at the big picture - your supplemental job doesn't have to be something you're passionate about; its function is to provide the funding for what you ARE passionate about.

Here's where a supplemental job can really make things easier with taxes. Let's say your supplemental job is teaching at a university, and you make $80,000 a year. You're also a sculptor, and you've established your sculpting as a business.

You spend $40,000 on your sculpting in a year. Because it's a business, you can claim that as a business expense. So, instead of paying taxes on the $80,000 you earned at your supplemental job, you only have to pay taxes on $40,000. That could save you over $13,000 in taxes.

Action: Weigh out the costs and earnings of your "day job". Consider the financial costs (child care, gas, transit, parking, clothing, supplies, training, etc.), time costs (travel time, time spent at work, bringing work home with you, etc.), mental costs (getting distracted trying to solve work problems when you're at home, or other stressful thoughts related to work), and lastly the emotional costs (being miserable in a job you don't like, interpersonal conflicts with colleagues, or feelings that the job or company is not aligned with your personal values).

3. Art is life and life is art. For artists, there's much more of a blurred line between personal and professional life.

Whether you're taking a trip, having lunch with a friend or seeing a movie, chances are that what you're doing will influence your creative work in some way.

And if you're not directly absorbing inspiration, you're fueling it in your conversations, by talking about your work. And so these activities can often be deducted as business expenses.

Action: Keep track of everything you're spending money on and keep notice of how it affects the business of your art. Get receipts for everything and keep these in a folder, envelope or box marked, "Expenses".

4. Live at the bottom of the curve and keep your footprints small. Artists often have an irregular flow of income coming in, so managing cash flow can be tricky. It's important to see the low times (when less money is coming in) as "normal", and budget yourself to be able to live on that. Keep your footprints small by minimizing the costs of your lifestyle.

Then, when good times happen and some money is rolling in, you'll be able to take care of some bigger things