WITH tax day looming, you can practically hear the cries of creative professionals across the country. That’s because the tax code hits many right where it hurts, by penalizing them for the distinctive way they make money.

The biggest offender is still the alternative minimum tax, despite the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which brought long-overdue reform. Two provisions of the A.M.T. hit a disproportionate number of actors, screenwriters and directors: In calculating it, taxpayers can’t deduct employee business expenses, nor can they deduct state, local and property taxes.

Most unionized entertainment professionals receive their income as wages, which means that on paper, they’re employees. But unlike most other groups of workers, entertainers must pay a hefty chunk of their income (around 30 percent) to obtain and negotiate work. This is in the form of commissions to agents (10 percent), managers (10 to 20 percent) and lawyers (5 percent); job-seeking travel; office or rehearsal-studio rental; business meals; union dues; coaching and classes; advertising and publicity; and research materials.

Because of where their work is concentrated, entertainment workers also tend to live in high-tax states like New York, Illinois and California. (Their unions have about 250,000 members, though not all are always working.) The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center projects that in 2014, about twice as many residents of high-tax states as low-tax state residents will get hit with A.M.T.