Watch this actually funny webseries about a tax-deducting superhero

Don’t be thrown off when you hear it’s a comedy about tax deductions. Who knew there could be so much material contained within the multitudes of the 1099?
The Deductress is the work of comedy duo Danielle Calodney and Caitlin Seymour, both of whom, until recently (Seymour got a W2 job), were freelancers. In it, Seymour, who wrote the show, plays a superhero who roams around Williamsburg, donating crucial advice on what can be deducted as a business expense to unsuspecting and overpaying Brooklyn freelancers.
Through four short episodes she battles her arch-nemesis, The Auditor, finds romance with a grateful freelancer and spends time watching British television and drinking wine with her girlfriend until she’s called into action.
“I sense something,” she says in Episode 4. “Someone’s formed an LLC two blocks away. I’m sorry. I have to go.”

The idea for the show came when Seymour and Calodney, who filmed, directed and edited the project, were having dinner with their boyfriends in January.

“Danielle kept having to take calls for a job and I was like, ‘You could expense this dinner,’ and she was like, ‘I could expense it but I couldn’t deduct it,’ and then we got drunker and I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if there was a superhero whose power was to tell you what you can deduct?'” Seymour explained over a lunch of bagels and lox. “By the way, guys, we can deduct this lunch.”

The best compliment received for our #webseries: It was actually funny, like not just funny because my friends made it. #FUNNY

— Cocktails & Ramen (@tailsandram) April 19, 2016

Seymour works in public relations now, and has always had a penchant for writing. In college she acted in a theater troupe. Calodney works as a freelance videographer and filmmaker. The two said there are both pressures and rewards to freelance work, especially in a place as expensive as Brooklyn.

“I gave up financial security for freedom and mobility. I don’t work well in a corporate environment,” Calodney explained, cheerfully. “My friends always think I’m not working. I’ll get a text, ‘Hey I’m off on Friday wanna go to yoga?’ And I’m like that’s not how it works! I do work all day!”

Caitlin Seymour (left) and Danielle Calodney (right) created “The Deductress.” (Photo by Tyler Woods)

Seymour, who’s now given up the freelance lifestyle, continued to remark on the bagels.

“I can’t get over how good this bagel is,” she said. “Like just the bagel, not even the cream cheese or salmon.”

Calodney said the shooting took two weekend days and the editing took about another two weeks, and both agreed they thought it turned out well.

“I’m lucky because here in New York I know a lot of talented people,” Calodney started.

“Who are willing to work for free!” Seymour interjected, gleefully.

“We all think we’re going bigger places so we’re all willing to donate time to each other as kind of an investment of the future,” Calodney explained. “Making something with our friends, there’s nothing as fun as that. A group of people getting together with a common goal and you’re not drinking, you’re not hanging out, you’re actually creating something.”

Seymour agreed, saying that working and creating something that hasn’t existed before is uniquely rewarding. She made a lot of the props for the show in her living room this winter.

“And pretending to be a superhero, even a like normcore superhero was really fun. Holy shit, this is an amazing bagel,” she added.

The two had so much fun they’re planning another project. This one a horror film. Calodney says she has friends that own part of an abandoned insane asylum in upstate New York. Seymour said she had genuinely freaked herself out at her desk the other night thinking of the scariest plot lines she could.