If you own a small business, one of the easiest ways to boost your profits is to make sure you are taking all the deductions you are entitled to on your tax return.
This can lower your taxable income and allow you to hold on to more working capital for your business. But U.S tax code for small businesses can be complicated, and some laws are changing for tax year 2021. If you’re not fully aware of the long list of deductions you can claim, follow our guide to tax write-offs for small businesses below.
Related: 5 small business tax tips for business owners
What Are Small Business Tax Deductions?
Small business tax deductions (or write-offs) are business-related expenses that you can subtract from your taxable income. According to the IRS, business expenses must be both ordinary and necessary to be considered deductible. An expense is “ordinary” if it’s common and accepted in your trade or business. An expense is “necessary” if it’s helpful and appropriate to your business. An expense generally doesn’t have to be indispensable, however, in order to be considered necessary. Many types of qualified business expenses are specifically addressed on the tax return, with a line to enter the deductible amount. Other qualified expenses can be listed separately.
How Do Small Business Tax Deductions Work?
Virtually all businesses have to file a tax return, but how much you’ll pay in taxes generally depends on how much your business has earned after qualified expenses have been deducted. A small business tax deduction is an expense that you can deduct from your income to reduce your federal and state tax bill. If your business brought in $150,000 in revenue, for example, but you had $50,000 in tax-deductible business expenses, you would then only be taxed on $100,000 of revenue, which could save you many thousands of dollars compared to what you’d owe on $150,000.A 100 percent tax deduction is a business expense of which you can claim the entire cost on your income taxes. In some cases, however, you may only be able to claim a portion of the expense on your tax return.
19 Small Business Tax Deductions
Whether you’re just starting a small business or your company is already well-established, here is a list of write-offs that may be available to you. It can be a good idea to consult a tax professional, like a CPA, to find out which of these deductions your small business is eligible to receive.
1. Advertising and Promotion
The cost of advertising and promoting your business is typically 100 percent deductible. This can include costs related to hiring someone to design a business logo, launching your website, buying ad space in print or online media, running a social media marketing campaign or sponsoring an event.
2. Car Expenses
If you use your car for business activities, such as driving to see a client or going to the store to buy office supplies, the costs may be tax deductible as long as you keep track of the mileage. The deductible mileage rate for 2021 is 56 cents per mile. If you have only one vehicle and use it for both personal and business needs, you will likely need to separate the mileage in order for car expenses to be considered a self-employed tax deduction.
3. Bad Debt
If you loaned money to an employee, client, or supplier and it wasn’t paid back or if you made credit sales to customers that were never paid, you may be able to claim the outstanding debt as a business tax deduction. Typically, you need to have proof that it was indeed a business debt and not a personal loan to write off these debts.
4. Business Meals
Do you take clients (or potential clients) out for meals to discuss business? If so, these costs may be 50 percent tax-deductible. The snacks and meals you buy for your employees are also typically 50 percent deductible. Food provided at company parties is generally 100 percent deductible. In order to be eligible, food costs typically need to be reasonable — extravagant meals likely won’t qualify.
5. Business Insurance
You likely have at least one type of insurance coverage for your company and/or your staff. That might be workers’ compensation, liability, property, or data breach insurance. If the insurance policy is considered ordinary and necessary, you can typically write off 100 percent of your premiums.
6. Business Loan Interest
If you’ve taken out loans for business purposes, including lines of credit and mortgages on business real estate or if you’ve used business credit cards, the interest you pay on those loans may be 100 percent tax-deductible.
7. Contractors and Freelancers
If you hire freelancers or independent contractors to help in your business, you may be able to deduct their fees as a business expense. You may also want to keep in mind that if you pay a contractor $600 or more during the tax year, the IRS typically requires you to submit a Form 1099-NEC to both the IRS and the contractor.
8. Education
If you invest in furthering your knowledge and expertise to give you a leg up in the market, or provide your employees with educational benefits, you may be able to write these costs off as business expenses. Tax-deductible education expenses can include classes and workshops intended to improve skills in your field, subscriptions to professional publications, attending industry seminars and webinars, and getting business certifications.
9. Equipment Depreciation
Depreciation is a way of spreading the cost of business equipment or assets over time. It essentially measures how much an asset’s value has been used up or exhausted during the year. Items that can be depreciated by small businesses typically include computers and other office equipment, machinery, office furniture, and business vehicles.
10. Gifts
If you give clients and prospects gifts as part of your business, the IRS generally permits you to deduct up to $25 per person per year. Any amount you spend over the $25 limit is not deductible. A gift given to a member of a client’s family is also typically looked at as a gift to the client unless you have a personal connection to the family member.
11. Home Office
Do you run your business out of your home? If so, you may be able to deduct expenses tied to creating and maintaining that workspace. To qualify for the home-office deduction, you generally must utilize part of your home regularly and exclusively for business. The office does not need to be in a separate room, but it must be in a space solely designated to work and business operations. You can typically deduct home office expenses in one of two ways: simplified (in which you multiply a specified rate by the square footage you use for your business) and regular (which involves you itemizing expenses for home office use, including mortgage interest, rent, insurance, utilities and depreciation).
12. Legal Fees
If your business has incurred legal expenses, such as hiring a business lawyer or going to court, you are generally able to deduct them as a business expense. Even if you go to court and do not win the case, those legal fees will likely qualify for deduction. The legal expenses incurred, however, typically must be considered ordinary and necessary to the business in order to be considered a tax write-off.
13. Office Supplies
Every pen, sheet of paper, and toner cartridge you purchase for your business can typically be written off on your taxes. For supplies to be deductible, they generally need to be considered essential to running and maintaining a functional office. It can be a good idea to keep receipts and categorize these small business expenses as you go. This can make it easier to file your taxes at the end of the year.
14. Professional Fees
This category includes expenses incurred hiring professionals like bookkeepers, accountants, and tax preparers for your business. Professional fees may also include any expenses related to obtaining or maintaining professional licenses or memberships in an industry organization.
15. Rent
If you pay rent for an office, warehouse, retail space or other types of business property, that monthly rent expense may be fully tax-deductible. If you deduct rent as a business expense, you will typically not be able to take the home office deduction as well.
16. Salaries and Employee Benefits
As long as they’re not for you or other business partners, employee salaries and benefits are generally considered write-offs for small businesses. This category typically includes employee’s wages, paid time off, commissions and bonuses, as well as employer-sponsored life insurance or retirement account contributions.
17. Startup Expenses
If you started your business in the latest tax year, you may be able to write off up to $5,000 of the expenses you invested in launching. Startup expenses generally include any costs incurred to create or buy the business, such as expenses related to marketing, travel, training, forming a corporation or partnership, and renovating a commercial space.
18. Phone and Internet
Generally, what you spend to provide your business with internet and phone service can be written off to lower tax liability. If you use the phone and internet for a mix of work and personal reasons, however, you can typically only write off the percentage of the cost that goes toward your business use.
19. Travel
If you travel for work, such as to visit clients or attend industry events, your travel expenses may be considered business tax write-offs. This can include transportation (flight, rental car, train, parking and tolls), hotel stays and meals.
The Takeaway
One of the simplest ways to reduce your income tax bill is to ensure you’re claiming all of the tax deductions available to your small business. Understanding which business expenses qualify can help you avoid overpaying come tax time and also help guide your business decisions throughout the year.
Learn More:
This article
originally appeared on SoFi.com and was
syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
This article provides general background information only and is not intended to serve as legal or tax advice or as a substitute for legal counsel. You should consult your own attorney and/or tax advisor if you have a question requiring legal or tax advice.The tips provided on this website are of a general nature and do not take into account your specific objectives, financial situation, and needs. You should always consider their appropriateness given your own circumstances.
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Paying tax on personal loans
There are plenty of reasons to take out a personal loan, many of which are totally financially savvy. For instance, you might be thinking about consolidating high-interest debts like credit card balances.
Or you might plan to borrow in order to repair the roof or remodel the kitchen to help increase your home value.
Maybe you’re considering taking out an unsecured personal loan to pay for an unexpected medical bill.
Whatever the case, personal loans can be a useful tool to help you cover expenses and stabilize your finances. Plus, they may be easier to qualify for than other types of loans and come with less red tape.
But as in all things finance, Uncle Sam wants his cut, too. So, as you consider your borrowing options, you might wonder about how taxes work on unsecured personal loans.
For instance, you may question if a personal loan can be taxed as income and whether you can get a personal loan interest tax deduction.
If you are trying to decide between several types of financing, reviewing the potential tax implications of each borrowing option can help you figure out a financing strategy that fits your situation.
In this article, we’ll cover things you’ll likely want to know about when it comes to tax on personal loans, including whether personal loans qualify as income, and whether the interest on them is tax-deductible.
Plus, we’ll cover some scenarios that can come with tax benefits that might apply to you and your loan. This way you’ll be armed with helpful knowledge useful when making the right borrowing decisions for you.
It is, however, important to note that we’re not tax experts. For any tax-related questions or advice, you’ll want to consult a tax accountant — and not a blog post like this one.
Related: A guide to understanding your taxes
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When you take out a personal loan, your lender agrees to loan you a particular amount, and you agree to pay that loan back over a set period of time with interest.
Which is actually good news on the tax front: Even though it seems like a windfall that you could be taxed on, it isn’t. Since you are agreeing to pay that money back, it does not qualify as income the way wages from a job would.
The only instance when money from a personal loan can be taxed as income is if your lender agrees to forgive the loan. Loan forgiveness can be a rare occurrence and typically occurs under the following circumstances:
- You are renegotiating the terms of a loan you are struggling to repay.
- You’re declaring bankruptcy.
- Your lender decides to stop collecting on the loan.
This is called a cancellation of debt, and it can carry tax liabilities since you’re receiving the remainder of the loan without the caveat that you’ll be paying it back.
For instance, let’s say you’ve taken out a $10,000 personal loan and have paid back $8,500 of it when the debt is forgiven or cancelled. The remaining $1,500 that you’d no longer have to pay back can be taxed as income during the year it is cancelled.
Typically, your lender will send you a tax form (a 1099-C) stating the amount cancelled, which you must subsequently report to the IRS on your tax return. Again, this is a very, very rare circumstance, so it’s nothing to count on.
Bottom line: In most situations, personal loans are not taxable as income — but if your loan is cancelled or forgiven, the remainder of the loan amount that you’ve yet to repay can be taxed the same way regular income is.
Depositphotos
The IRS regulates which types of loans come with tax deductions. While there are some types of loans that have tax-deductible interest, unfortunately, personal loans don’t fit into that category.
The interest you pay on personal loans is not tax deductible. So, if you take out a loan and pay a few hundred dollars in interest over the course of your repayment, that’s not a cost that will reduce what you owe in taxes come April.
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Although personal loan interest isn’t tax deductible, there are many other types of loans that do carry special tax benefits and interest deductions. For instance, student loan interest and mortgage and property loan interest can be deductible up to certain amounts, although there are some restrictions.
Michael Krinke
You may deduct up to $2,500 of interest on qualified student loans or the full amount you paid during the tax year,whichever is the lesser.
However, this deduction is gradually phased out as your income increases, and it is not available if you or your spouse can be claimed as a dependent on someone else’s tax return.
fizkes / istockphoto
In the majority of cases, you can deduct every cent of interest you pay on your home mortgage. The loan must be secured (that is, your home must be offered as collateral on the loan; this deduction will not work if you use an unsecured personal loan to cover some or all of the cost of your housing).
As of 2018, you can deduct the interest on up to $750,000 of a qualified home loan if married and filing jointly, or up to $375,000 of qualified debt for single filers. (These limits were lowered from $1 million under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, but if you signed your mortgage before December 16, 2017, you’re grandfathered into the previous limit.)
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Some business expenses are tax deductible, and that includes the interest you pay on loans taken out for business-related purposes. However, you can also deduct business expenses you pay for using an unsecured personal loan, which we’ll dive into a little bit more deeply in the next section.
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Although staying debt-free is standard financial advice, sometimes taking out a personal loan can be a smart money move, especially if you’re already dealing with high-interest forms of debt, such as consumer credit cards.
Debt consolidation, a financial tactic, which involves taking out one large loan to cover multiple smaller debts, may reduce your credit utilization ratio and potentially help you save money on interest, not to mention make your bill-paying schedule a whole lot simpler.
For example, maybe you owe $8,000 on one personal credit card and $4,500 on another credit card, both with high (and different) interest rates. With multiple bills coming due at different times of the month, chances are you’re only paying the minimum required amount on each of them, which means you’re paying them off slowly and paying a lot of interest.
However, if you were able to qualify for and take out a $12,500 personal loan at lower interest rate, you’d only have to worry about one payment date, and you might even save money on the sky-high credit card interest rates, which could simplify both your life and your finances.
Personal loans (home improvement loans) can also help you get started on major home renovations, which may increase the value of your house and help you earn back your investment in the form of equity.
Learn more:
This article
originally appeared on SoFi.com and was
syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
Tax Information: This article provides general background information only and is not intended to serve as legal or tax advice or as a substitute for legal counsel. You should consult your own attorney and/or tax advisor if you have a question requiring legal or tax advice.
Financial Tips & Strategies: The tips provided on this website are of a general nature and do not take into account your specific objectives, financial situation, and needs. You should always consider their appropriateness given your own circumstances.
External Websites: The information and analysis provided through hyperlinks to third party websites, while believed to be accurate, cannot be guaranteed by SoFi. Links are provided for informational purposes and should not be viewed as an endorsement.
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