So if you’re paying for featured listings on the Knot, Wedding Wire, PeerSpace, or wherever, those are tax-deductible too. Of course, this applies to any lead generation costs. Of course, if you’re running social media ads or search engine marketing, which is common in the event space, you’ll be able to deduct those costs from your taxes. If you’re using a company like GoDaddy, just run through your products and keep a list. Often you’ll pay for website items on a multi-year basis. It’s easy to forget website costs because you might not even know what an SSL certificate is or that you paid for your domain name on a 5-year contract. But are you deducting all the relevant costs involved? Make sure you’re including your work email fees (if you pay for work email) as well as hosting costs, SSL certificates, and registrar fees for your domain name. Website CostsĪs an event pro, you’ve likely got a website. And this even includes toilet paper and cleaning supplies. The good news is that office supplies are deductible. I mean, that’s why we made our event timelines and task lists into one-click PDFs. Office SuppliesĮvent professionals use a lot of notebooks, Post-it notes, and printer ink. And your accountant will have a good idea of what the appropriate depreciation is. It ain’t easy reading, but it’s pretty well defined. There are specific rules for different types of equipment as laid out here. Remember that these are long-term items, and the IRS expects you to make the deductions over time. Tax deductions for equipment include work computers, desks, chairs, printers, phones, and anything else you use to get work done. Still, I figured it’s worth knowing that there’s a shortcut. You might save more money by going through the hassle of calculating everything. Note: if you’re struggling with the calculations overall, there’s a Simplified Method that allows for $5 per square foot of your home office. When working from home, you can calculate the percentage of time spent working and deduct heat and electricity expenses. The same thing goes for heating or cooling your home. In that case, you can calculate the number of hours you spend online for work and deduct that percentage of your annual internet provider’s fees.įor example, if you use the internet 8 hours a day and 4 of those hours are for work, you can deduct 50% of your annual internet costs. Suppose you spend a ton of time online for your work (which is many of us). Note: If you’re an employee, you likely don’t qualify for a home-office deduction – the rules change, and this is one of the more recently updated tax laws. In that case, you can figure out the business percentage by dividing the number of rooms used in your business by the total number of rooms in the house.” According to Turbotax, “an easier calculation is acceptable if the rooms in your home are all about the same size. The home office business deductions are based on either the percentage of your home used for the business or a simplified square footage calculation (see Simplified Method below). According to the IRS, for your workspace to qualify as a home office, it needs to be: Many event pros work from a home office, even when there isn’t a lockdown. And in case you hadn’t thought of every possible deduction, here are some ideas to run past your tax preparer. It’s up to you to help your accountant help you. I recommend working with an accountant on your taxes and ensuring they agree with your deductions, but you know your event business better than anyone else. So the purpose of finding deductions is to make sure you’re paying the correct amount of taxes. And that increases the likelihood of a solid refund if you overpaid during the year. The more you deduct, the smaller your taxable income. Total income – tax deductions = taxable income. If you take your total income and minus any tax deductions, then what’s left is taxable income. Just in case, let’s clarify what taxable income is. Photo by Kelly Sikkema What Is Taxable Income? Always try and pay expenses out from a business account. Keep records ( just your standard bookkeeping).In the end, do your utmost to keep personal and business expenses entirely separate at every step. It’s one thing to calculate the percentage of floor space, but quite another to figure out how many disinfectant wipes went into your business versus family use. It just makes everything easier to track when it comes to tax deductions. So even though it can be painful to pay up each April or see our wages garnished, taxes are generally a net good.ĭavid, our CEO, is a rockstar accountant and recommends buying separate supplies even if you’re working from home. And taxes, well, they help fund a lot of the things we take for granted. We work hard for every penny, but we also benefit from the things around us. Here are some tax deductions for event pros, so you can make sure your tax preparer is totally on point.
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