The "tax write-off" thread.
 

My other thread title was a little off so let me make another one here. What are your write-offs? Here are some of the things i came up with for webmasters.

- Net access and computers
- Car gas, fixes, insurance
- Office electricity, water bill, desk and office equipments.
- People you hire to do programing, design, outsourcing, hired help ext.
- Processing fees if you have a paysite / visa registration
- Servers, bandwidth cost and domains.
- Other money you spent on your site ex. advertisement.
- Purchase of new web properties (websites, domains, etc)

Got more? Add them! :thumbsup

Some of the things YOU came up with, lol, not a decent CPA?

Justify your car and expenses .... go ahead!

you can write off i think up to 50% of food too.. thats biz related. go out, mention work. keep receipt.. write off 50%.

all the semen I burst while doing my job

remember that domain sales are capital gains and because of our republican controlled government, the tax rate for cap gains is still just 15%

I know i'll be writing off my servers and new laptop :)

Depends what kind of sites you own or run,
I have a lot of travel sites that I'm always needing content for and prefer to shoot my own...
Product review sites require me to purchase products before I can review them...

The limits are legally endless and with over 3000 domains I have one on any topic the tax department want to talk to me about.

Off to do a movie review later today and might fit in a resturant and bar review while I'm there, a seperate review will be need for the wine I drink as well.

First off most here are to young to have ever gone thru an actual, full blown IRS audit.

Don't, don't ever trigger one. Erase the phrase "tax write off" from your vocabulary. Replace with "Business Expense"

"Business Expense" see how your thinking has already changed?

If Steve Lightspeed meets you for lunch, save the receipt ... If you and a friend go to Hooters, you and a friend went to Hooters. Clear so far?

LOL, thats pretty funny.

If anyone wants ALL their bookkeeping centralized for easier accounting come tax time, visit my friend's site http://www.sbsuite.com This guy's got it together--he used to work for Deloitte & Touche, one of the biggest accounting firms in the US.

And expenses never exceed income for each one correct?

car gas? not if you work from a home office surely.

I sometime like to go check up on my servers which are in texas. :winkwink: lol

(not really)

Unfortunately they do, so my company normally runs at a loss :( I'm hopeful at some time in the future the company may show a profit, but its very hard with the high cost of gathering content for my sites, last year I spent 3 weeks in Europe, cost was just over 35k and so far the returns have only been in the 1-2,000 range...

It makes you want to throw your hands in the air and just give up but I push on trying my best. Next month I'm going to do a luxury hotel tour or Thailand and I'm hoping that long term the site may make more money than the ones I have tried in the past....

I had a tax audit this year, they went thru everything and found some areas where my company was not keeping enough records, so I had to make a back payment of $3000 and promised we would watch those areas they found. After nearly 8 years of running the company and a full audit $3k seemed painless at the time. Worst thing was the Dali the company brought in NY can't hang on the dining room wall of my house any more....

Personally i am paranoid and would never write off anything that would trigger an audit.

The truth is that I'll probably never meeet another webmaster for lunch, I'm just not that sociable, so I'm NOT going to write off going out to dinner or whatever. I am just too paranoid.

I also work from home so I don't write of gas/leasing business car.

And I'm not going to deduct home ofc either because I heard this is more likely to trigger audits...

Last April I was in such a rush I actually forgot to write off internet bills, i dont know wtf happened there, but i actually forgot and i'm not going to file an amendment because it would only create more scrutiny plus its just a few hundred bucks.

I would rather overpay then get audited or in trouble.

I only write things like domains, hosting, advertising... things like that...

I dont see how webmasters actually write off cars, maybe if they work in an ofc. Personally i hardly ever even LEAVE my house (seriously), i just think its risky unless ur a photographer and travel to shoot or something like that.

Good post, always look at areas of the tax code that have been abused and under scrutiny, like home offices. Not to mention running a business, porn at that, might be against zoning laws and rental agreements.

Driving a car to your office is NOT deductible, by the way.

You got your taxes sorted out nicely! :thumbsup

It's wonderful to make consistant losses year after year - tho takes some effort to keep it that way :winkwink:

I am so glad I don't have to deal with or worry about the IRS. :D


Everything I can reasonably think of as a business expense is written off here. Everything. From new printer cartridges to pens to the new phone I'm about to buy. EVERYTHING.

And, since I also own rental property, I have more write-offs to keep track of there as well. Certain percentages of my home's utility bills and maintenance expences for example, all qualify is write-offs.

But you think I'm the one keeping track of it all? Ha.... think again. I have a great tax guy who comes by a couple times a year, takes all my receipts away, and tally's up the whole mess for me. He also handles my invested money, and even did up my living will for me a few years back. Hell if he was a lawyer I'd have him on retainer for that too.

No, I won't post his name.

Well if you are in the business of buying and selling domains for resale such as a broker, it is generally understood that the domain costs should be expensed in the year they are sold as cost of goods sold and any revenue resulting in the sale of such should be treated as gross sales, the difference between each being gross profit from which one pays normal taxes not capital gains taxes.

If however you purchase one for your own businesses use (not intended for resale), then there is some confusion as the IRS has not ruled on how to classify such purchases and sales and thus people generally report them in one of two ways.

Some consider it's purchase price an expense written off in the year purchased. For example, if you bought a domain for traffic that only lasted for 6 months that would seem logical. The problem is if you later sell that domain where do you declare that revenue. Those that expensed it will usually just add any revenue from selling it into a general sales account as business income.

Others consider it's purchase as an asset, which if later sold capital gains tax is paid which often is less than ones income tax bracket. If the domain is for ones company name for example, like yahoo.com, I suppose this is what they would do.

Maybe you'll get some back at the end of the year.

One step even better is not pay any taxes or even get a form to fill in - and it's all legal :thumbsup

When you get tired of Revenue Canada CDS - move offshore!

It's probably one decision I made years ago that I'll never regret - it's not even the payable taxes that were the problem - just the time-wasting form filling.

Agreed, and I'd love to talk it over directly with you sometime.

However, like I posted before, I don't have the hassle of filling in my own forms. My tax guy does all that, and does the submission for my every year too.

All I basically do is toss my receipts in a box all year. :1orglaugh

GREAT POST,

This is the only way to do it. The peace-of-mind is incredible.

You failed to mention one thing, it's also cheaper with this kind of service because you both know what is needed. Time is not spent recreating anything. Quarterly patterns emerge, nothing gets overlooked. :thumbsup

:thumbsup

cocaine!!!!!!!!


lol jokes

entertainment ?

a lot of gas! :winkwink:

Funny nobody mentioned conventions, that is probably the biggest non-business related business event there is.
In Denmark there is a personal "tax-write off" for driving your personal car for business where you get a tax write off of 57 us cent per kilometer you drive, since I travel a good amount I just bought a used car for $60K financed over 4 years, and I basicly only have to drive to our company location 1 time every 8-9 weeks and back in my personal car, then the car is free for me, driving it more (work related) will make me money as my tax deductions get even bigger then :thumbsup

I believe the last few years he has charged me around $75 to do up and submit my taxes.

And yes, I write that fee off as well. :D

as I said, don't forget to treat your domain sales profits as a capital gains regardless of what chat board CPAs want to tell you about the less than 1% instance when it doesn't apply.

GOOD CPA's are your best ally with keeping you honest when it comes to biz expenses and they are treated when it comes to tax time.

Honesty is the best policy when it comes to dealing with the IRS. Making a few extra bucks on the slide is not worth the pain you will go thru if audited.