{"id":251,"date":"2010-02-16T18:37:27","date_gmt":"2010-02-16T18:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/?p=251"},"modified":"2016-08-14T18:01:31","modified_gmt":"2016-08-14T23:01:31","slug":"is-it-deductible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/taxes\/is-it-deductible\/","title":{"rendered":"Is It Deductible ?"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><strong>What business expenses can I deduct on my tax return?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Where do I take the deduction<\/strong> for&#8230;(fill in the blank)?<\/li>\n<li><strong>What records do I need <\/strong>to prove the deduction?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Those are the most popular questions I get from small business owners this time of year.<\/p>\n<p>Starting today and continuing through the end of this year&#8217;s filing season, I&#8217;ll be answering those questions in a series of posts. If you have a specific question you&#8217;d like me to answer, please post it in the <a href=\"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/taxes\/whats-your-most-urgent-question-about-business-taxes\/\" target=\"_blank\">comment section<\/a> here or email it to me.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s start today with the basic requirements for an expense to be deductible on your business tax return.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s what the IRS says.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The expense must be ordinary<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The expense must be necessary<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The expense must be reasonable in amount<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The expense must be substantiated<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Ordinary<\/strong> means that the expense is one that is common and accepted in your field of business, trade, or profession. <strong>Necessary<\/strong> means that the expense is helpful and appropriate for your business, but it doesn&#8217;t have to be required.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reasonable<\/strong> means considering the facts and circumstances of your particular situation.<\/p>\n<p>Not much help, you say?\u00a0 Sounds like it&#8217;s all a judgment call?\u00a0 Yes, in many ways it is.\u00a0 I guess that&#8217;s why the <strong>deductibility of business expenses is one of the 10 most litigated tax issues<\/strong>. \u00a0 I don&#8217;t say this to scare you, but to inform.<\/p>\n<p>Did you know that tax deductions are actually a matter of &#8220;legislative grace?&#8221; That means you have to be able to point to a relevant statute and show that your expenditure comes within its terms.<\/p>\n<p>This is one reason why I recommend you hire a professional tax preparer to do your business return.\u00a0 The more you learn and understand about taxes, the more beneficial that relationship will be.<\/p>\n<p>Next time I&#8217;ll talk about <strong>where to take your business deductions<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> What business expenses can I deduct on my tax return? Where do I take the deduction for&#8230;(fill in the blank)? What records do I need to prove the deduction? <\/p>\n<p>Those are the most popular questions I get from small business owners this time of year.<\/p>\n<p>Starting today and continuing through the end of this [&#8230;]<\/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":[73,231,147],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-taxes","tag-business-taxes","tag-deductible-expenses","tag-schedule-c","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","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=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2601,"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/2601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherylschuff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}