{"id":234,"date":"2010-01-08T00:51:34","date_gmt":"2010-01-08T00:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/?p=234"},"modified":"2010-01-26T03:11:28","modified_gmt":"2010-01-26T03:11:28","slug":"tax-tips-for-small-business-owners-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/taxes\/tax-tips-for-small-business-owners-2009\/","title":{"rendered":"Solo Business Owners: Beware of IRS Focus on Schedule C"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

The IRS is planning to focus a lot more on the Schedule Cs that are filed with taxpayers\u2019 1040s this year because they think that\u2019s a major source of the tax gap<\/strong>. That\u2019s the difference between what the IRS thinks<\/em> taxpayers should be paying in Federal income taxes and the amount that taxpayers actually report<\/em> as their tax liability. <\/p>\n

What causes the tax gap?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are three main reasons that the tax gap exists<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Taxpayers don\u2019t report all the income they receive<\/li>\n
  2. Taxpayers take deductions they aren\u2019t entitled to or can\u2019t prove<\/li>\n
  3. Some business owners don\u2019t file a return at all<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    According to the instructors at a recent tax seminar I attended, some of the areas that the IRS is expected to look at closely this year include<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Hobby activities being claimed as businesses<\/li>\n
    2. Cash sales not being reported<\/li>\n
    3. Personal items being deducted as business expenses<\/li>\n
    4. Improper expensing of capital items<\/li>\n
    5. Inadequate documentation for auto, cell phone, and entertainment expenses<\/li>\n
    6. Startup expense deductions greater than $5000 in the first year<\/li>\n
    7. Industries for which audit guides have been issued<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      I can’t be certain this will happen; just sayin’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

      The IRS is planning to focus a lot more on the Schedule Cs that are filed with taxpayers\u2019 1040s this year because they think that\u2019s a major source of the tax gap. That\u2019s the difference between what the IRS thinks taxpayers should be paying in Federal income taxes and the amount that taxpayers actually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","tve_updated_post":"","tve_custom_css":"","tve_user_custom_css":"","tve_globals":{},"tcb2_ready":0,"tcb_editor_enabled":0,"tve_landing_page":"","_tve_header":"","_tve_footer":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[73,147,221],"class_list":["post-234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-taxes","tag-business-taxes","tag-schedule-c","tag-sole-proprietors","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}