Mark Kohler explains when education counts as a tax deduction. You can only deduct it if it maintains or improves skills for a business you already have, not if it qualifies you for a new trade. Workshops, certifications, and continuing education qualify, but you need an existing business making money first.
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Education is typically not deductible under the IRS code. Why is that? It's because a lot of people take education and do nothing with it. And so the IRS is like, we're not going to allow education for education purposes be a write off. But in the publication and code it says education costs are deductible as an ordinary and necessary business expense only if the education maintains or improves skills needed in the existing business. See, the person already has a business. It is getting education to improve or maintain that business skill number two does not qualify the taxpayer for something new. Because, see, again, the IRS is like, we don't want to let you write something off to go do something. We don't even know if you're going to do it. The concept is, is if you've got a business that's making money and you go get education that doesn't get audited, it's very common. Continue in education, the IRS has examples of workshops, seminars and conferences related to your business. Online courses that improve your current business skills, continuing education, industry certifications that maintain certificates. So what I want to tell people is when you go to take a tax write off in the arena of education, again, I'm trying to distill this down to our approach to this. Start making money, start a business. And then you went to a workshop to get better at it. I want to write that off.
