1. One Fee, Two Kinds of Income
You close a loan, the title company pays you $150, and the whole thing lands in your bank as one payment. At tax time, that single fee is really two payments wearing one coat: - **Notarial income** — what you charged for the notarial acts themselves. The stamps. - **Signing-service income** — everything else. Printing, driving, scanning, waiting, and handling the package. Here is why the split matters. Fees for notarial acts may be treated differently for **self-employment tax** than fees for other services. The service portion is generally fully subject to the 15.3% self-employment tax. The notarial portion may not be. Same bank deposit, two tax treatments — and the difference is real money at the end of a full year of signings. Two things that are *not* true, because the internet says them anyway: not all your income is exempt just because you are a notary, and the notarial part is still income — it is taxed for income tax like everything else. Only the self-employment tax treatment differs.
2. How the Split Actually Works
Suppose a signing pays $150, and you performed four notarial acts. Florida caps the per-act fee — verify the current limit in the notary handbook, but say it is $10. - Notarial portion: 4 acts x $10 = **$40** - Signing-service portion: **$110** That is the whole method. The notarial portion is what you were allowed to charge for the stamps, backed by your journal. The rest is service income. If you charge a flat $150 and "include the stamps," the split does not disappear — you still have to allocate in a **reasonable way you can support**. The cleanest support is your journal: it shows the date, the acts performed, and what you charged per act. No journal, no allocation — and then the whole fee is service income.
3. Three Scenarios, Worked
The split gets easier when you see the kinds of jobs that produce it. Three from a normal week: **Scenario 1: A standard refinance close — $150.** Four acts in the package. Journal shows 4 acknowledgments at $10 each. Notarial portion $40, service portion $110. The printing, the drive, the scanbacks, the 90 minutes at the table: all of that is the $110. **Scenario 2: Print-and-ship only — $65.** No signer meeting, no acts performed. The entire $65 is service income. There is nothing to allocate because nothing was notarized. The same is true for scanback-only jobs and for edits the signing service pays separately. **Scenario 3: A general notary day — no signing service at all.** A hospital signing ($75, three acts), a loan modification ($40, two acts), and two walk-ups ($10 each, one act apiece). All mobile-notary work, no title company involved. The acts still count the same way: six acts x your per-act charge is the notarial portion, and any travel fees you billed on top are service income. The allocation is not just for loan signings — it follows every notarial act you perform, wherever it happens. The pattern: **the acts make the allocation, and the journal proves the acts.**
4. Doing It for a Full Year
One signing at a time, the difference looks small. Over a year of signings it is not: - 200 signings in a year, averaging $40 of notarial income each = **$8,000** potentially treated differently for self-employment tax - If the split holds, the difference on that $8,000 can be over $1,100 in self-employment tax That money is only available if the split exists in your records — not reconstructed in April. This is why we tell every signing agent the same thing: your journal is a tax document. Log the acts when you do them. Our free Notary Fee Allocation Worksheet gives you the columns — date, company, total fee, acts, per-act fee, notarial portion, service portion — with yearly totals that drop straight into your Schedule C.
5. What One Journal Entry Should Show
For the $150 refinance above, your journal line should read something like: - Date and time; document type (refinance, 4 acknowledgments) - Signer name and ID type (per your state's rules) - Fee charged per act and total notarial fee: $10 x 4 = $40 - The total received from the signing service: $150 That is one minute of writing per job. At the end of the year, the notarial column sums itself — and that sum, against your total 1099s and deposits, is the allocation. If you ever use an invoicing app, put the per-act fee on the invoice too, so your billing and your journal tell the same story.
6. The Income That Is All Service
Watch for the payments that have **no notarial portion at all**: - **Print-only or scanback jobs** — no acts performed, all service - **Loan edits and corrections** paid by the signing service - **Mileage or travel fees** listed separately on your payout - **Direct-signing work where you are not acting as a notary** — courier-style document delivery These are fully self-employment-taxable service income. The allocation question only exists where actual notarial acts happened.
7. Mixed Streams: Notary, Signing, and Everything Else
Many signing agents also notarize outside of signings — hospital signings, loan modifications, general mobile notary work, even apostille courier runs. Each stream gets reported, but the notarial acts from *all* of them go in the same pot for the allocation. Your journal does not care which client paid; it cares how many acts you performed and what you charged. Then the expenses stack the other way: mileage for mobile work, printer and supplies for signings, your commission and bond and E&O insurance for the whole business. Business costs reduce the profit the self-employment tax applies to — so records on both sides of the ledger matter.
8. Reporting It on Schedule C
All of it — notarial and service — reports as business income on Schedule C. The allocation shows up in how the return computes self-employment tax on the notarial portion, not in hiding income somewhere. Every dollar appears. If someone tells you a way to make the signing fees invisible, that is not tax planning; that is a problem. For the full picture of reporting and reconciling your forms — signing services send 1099-NECs, payment platforms send 1099-Ks, and some clients send nothing — read 1099-NEC vs. 1099-K: what self-employed taxpayers need to know.
9. Questions Signing Agents Actually Ask
**"My signing service pays one flat fee and has no idea how many stamps I did. Does that kill the allocation?"** No. The payer's records are not the test — yours are. The service reports the total it paid you; your journal is what establishes the notarial portion of it. **"What if I charge less than the state cap per act?"** Use what you actually charged. The cap is a ceiling, not an assumption. If you charged $7 per act, the allocation is built on $7. **"Do travel fees count as notarial income?"** No. A travel or mileage fee is service income even though the trip led to a stamp. Only the fee for the act itself belongs in the notarial column. **"I only did loan signings and no other notary work. Can I still split?"** Yes — if acts were performed and your journal shows them, the split exists regardless of what kind of appointment it was. **"Can I decide the split at tax time?"** You *report* it at tax time, but you *establish* it with records made at the time. An April reconstruction of January's stamps is exactly the kind of allocation that fails an IRS question.
10. The Five-Minute Version
1. Your journal decides the split. Log acts and per-act fees when you perform them. 2. Notarial portion = acts x your actual per-act charge, within your state's cap. 3. Everything else is service income, fully subject to self-employment tax. 4. Print-only, travel fees, edits: all service, no allocation. 5. Bring the journal (or the worksheet totals) to your appointment — that is the document that makes the split real. We prepare notary and signing agent returns with the allocation built in, documented, and defensible. Start secure intake or see how we work with notaries and signing agents.