We’ve had two other articles here on expenses you can deduct from your taxes if you’re a business. The first was titled 5 Items You Can Deduct From Your Taxes. The second was called Trip Expenses You Can Deduct For Your Business.
We could go on and on but we like spacing things out some; after all, we don’t want to overwhelm anyone all at once. With that, here are 5 more things you can write off that we haven’t covered yet.
1. Education. If you need continual education to keep a certification, or if you need to go to any types of classes where you’re learning something you can apply to your business, you can deduct those expenses. This includes joining networking groups because often many of them have educational programs you can partake of.
2. Costs of goods sold. Anything you have to buy to create something for a client, to ship something to a client, or in representing your client in any way that the client doesn’t immediately reimburse you back for you can write off. For instance, the client might reimburse you for sales portfolios you create but you might feel silly billing them for the paper or copying charges. If you don’t bill that to them, but if you do you can write things like that off.
3. Services you hire that help you concentrate on your business. If you hire an accountant you can write that off. If you pay for internet services for your business you can write that off. If you want the landscape around your office to look good you can write that off. Even maid services if you work from home can be written off in some fashion. Of course it’s best to talk to an accountant to find out what percentage of it you can take for some of these and other things.
4. Advertising. Anything you spend on advertising, whether you pay someone else to do it or you do it yourself, is allowable. Of course if you’re advertising on Twitter and handling it yourself you can’t write that off, but if you’re paying for a service that sends out occasional tweets promoting your business you get to write that off.
5. Clothing. Of course this one is within reason, but there are clothing items you can write off if they’re part of your business. For instance, lawyers can write off suits and shoes. Plumbers can write off the costs of their uniforms. If you’re on the road and you need to buy new clothes because your baggage got lost and you can’t get reimbursed by anyone, you can write that off, although the airlines might pay you back for some of that. However, if you’re trying to write off a $500 pair of sunglasses… you’ll want to talk to your accountant about that.
