Penny Kidd walks through tax deductions for self-employed people and entrepreneurs. Track mileage with apps like MileIQ, write off home office costs and utilities, and keep a written business plan. A CPA can help you find legitimate deductions you're missing.
Chapters
Hey, it's Penny Kidd. It's almost tax time in this year, and this causes people a lot of stress on both the personal and the entrepreneurial side. Sometimes if you're a business owner, there are certain expenses that you get to write off if you're a home office person like me, but you have to know what you paid for those things. So a lot of times people are digging back through all their old bills and trying to come up with numbers, where if you're doing a good written budget, it's really easy to just look at your budget and say, how much did I spend on utilities? How much was my phone? Whatever the things are that you get to write off. There are apps out there that really make write-offs much easier. I really like MileIQ if you have to track your mileage. Use an app like MileIQ, or I think even QuickBooks now does something like that where you can consistently all year long keep track of your miles. Don't try to go reinvent the wheel. Oftentimes I think that we're not getting the things that are legit expenses that you can write off. But if you're doing a personal budget, it also plays into when you're an entrepreneur because then you can gather some of those numbers quite easily to be able to say, okay, What percentage of those expenses do I get to write off because I office from home? And since the pandemic happened, a number of people are self-employed and work from home and get to write off some of that stuff. So be talking to your CPA about what are the legit expenses that you can write off. Is it part of your cell phone or your utilities or your maintenance around the house? Those are all things that I want to make sure that we get every legal, um, thing to write off that's possible. Having a written plan for both business and personal really does make this time of year less stressful. So I want to encourage you to start being intentional with your spending. If there's some way I can help you get organized and get that part of your life under control so you can focus on the more important things, I'd love to be a part of that. Reach out. Be wise.
