Happy Holidays Everyone!
A couple of weeks ago Lily got us started with the End of Year Crunch with her article “It’s Time For Year-end Bookkeeping Cleanup (& Contest!)“. Her article talks about what you should be doing now, before the end of the year, to get ready for tax time. Please click on the title of the article to read what Lily has to say and to enter her contest. The contest ends on December 15th, so don’t delay.
As your going through all your entries to make sure they’re categorized correctly (as suggested by Lily’s article ) you should also be checking to see if you have them tagged as a deductible business expense. If your using QuickBooks you can have them tagged specifically to a line on your tax form. To do this: open your chart of accounts, highlight the appropriate account, right click and select edit account, then use the drop down box next to tax line mapping to select the appropriate tax line this account applies to. This will help your tax person out greatly!
Below you’ll find a list of common (and some not so common) deductible business expenses that you should be checking into. This is a partial list from June Walker’s book Self-Employed Tax Solutions. It’s a great book, you can find more details about it on my previous post “A Book about taxes thats not boring…is it possible?” or by visiting June’s site “June Walker tax and financial advisor to the self-employed”
- Advertising/Promotions
- Auto Expense
- Equipment
- Business Insurance
- Interest Expense
- Legal/Professional Service Expense
- Supplies
- Postage
- Equipment Rental
- Rent on Business Property
- Repairs/Maintenance
- Business Taxes
- Licenses and Fees
- Meals and entertainment
- Travel
- Telephone
- Office Utilities
- Wages to employees
- Subcontractor Fees
- Bank Service Charges
- Costumes/cleaning/makeup
- Dues/entrance fees
- Business gifts
- Home Office
- Photocopies/Printing
- Education expense
- Transportation(public)
You can also download a free report on June’s site that will talk about the deductible expenses above in more detail.
Happy Holidays and thanks for reading.
