5 Tax Advantages For A Small Business Owner

As a business owner, you can write off quite a few of your every day expenses! Here is a list of some of the most popular ones:

Work-Related Travel Expenses

If you travel for work, all expenses incurred can be written off at tax time, including airfare, hotels, rental car expenses, tips, dry cleaning, meals and more. To qualify as work-related travel, your trip needs to include the following:

• The trip must be necessary to your business.
• The trip must take you away from your home, i.e. the city or area in which your company conducts its business.
• You must be traveling away from your home town or area for longer than a normal work day and it must require you to sleep or rest on route.

Business Meals

You can write off 50% of qualifying food and drink purchases. To qualify, the meal needs to be related to your business and you have to keep the following documentation related to the meal:

• Date and location of the meal
• Business relationship of the person or people you dined with
• The total cost of the meal

Tip: The easiest way to track business meal expenses is to keep your receipt and jot down notes on the back about the details of the meal!

Use of Your Car For Business

If you use your car strictly for business-related purposes, you can write off all costs associated with operating and maintaining it.

If your car use is used for both business and personal reasons, you can only deduct costs that relate to the business usage of the vehicle.

Home Office

If you work from home or use a portion of your home for your business, you might qualify for a deduction. To qualify, your work area has to be used exclusively for business (i.e. you can’t write off the square footage of your dining room if you do your work at the table during the day) and you need to use the home office regularly as your principal place for conducting business.

Education & Personnel Development

Any educational expenses you incur to bring value to your business are fully deductible for tax purposes. The requirements for education-related expenses are that the course or workshop must improve your skills or help maintain your professional expertise. Educational expenses that qualify for deductions include:

• Courses and classes related to your field of work
• Seminars and webinars
• Trade publication subscriptions
• Books related to your industry

*Click here to check out our online courses and take advantage of this owner benefit before the end of the year!

In Summary

I hope you found this episode helpful!

Once you have a plan for reducing your tax bill, you will need to make those savings work for you! A great way to do this is by reinvesting it wisely.

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