Work at Home Forum - An online community of those who work from home.
Accounting and Legal Advice Work at Home Forum / Accounting and Legal Advice /

Tax deduct cellphone/internet

Author Message
Goodrat
Forums Member
Joined: 17 Mar 2007
Posts: 3
#1 · Posted: 17 Mar 2007 12:25


Can I deduct all of my internet since I sell only the internet? There are 3 computers in the house, the others may be used for personal.
Also, we have 3 cell phones. Family plan. The other 2 are used for personal and only cost $10 a month, but the main number is for business and is about $50. We can share minutes though. I want to write off the $50.

Goodrat
Forums Member
Joined: 17 Mar 2007
Posts: 3
#2 · Posted: 19 Mar 2007 08:33


http://www.nshd.com/pdf/tax_action_memos/deducting_cell_phone_expenses .pdf

example of an internet search

Omaha
Forums Member
Joined: 11 May 2007
Posts: 3
#3 · Posted: 11 May 2007 17:51


Well as long as you can give legitimate proof that the phone is used primarily for business use I would say it is safe to write off just the $50. If you were to be audited you could show that the other phones are not used for this purpose and therefore were not used for a deduction.

pcwork
Forums Member
Joined: 12 Aug 2006
Posts: 1650
#4 · Posted: 11 May 2007 18:31


You can deduct internet expenses as business expenses

__________________
ttoadvisor
Forums Member
Joined: 27 Jun 2007
Posts: 3
#5 · Posted: 27 Jun 2007 13:59


According to my read of the IRS website, you can only deduct things like the Internet if you ONLY use it for your business. The safest course of action would be to read the IRS website for yourself.

Goodrat
Forums Member
Joined: 17 Mar 2007
Posts: 3
#6 · Posted: 20 Nov 2008 19:56


The cell is my only business number.
Also, without internet, I have no business.
To interpret IRS rules....
basically, if you are a sole prop, just give the IRS everything you earn from your business so you keep working for corporations.

Newbie Shield
Gold Member
Joined: 22 Sep 2007
Posts: 2226
#7 · Posted: 21 Nov 2008 05:03


Goodrat,

You can deduct part of your internet charges else you might raise an audit flag. Consider 49%.

You can deduct your biz cell phone entirely if you never take any personal calls on it. Else consider a lesser percentage. It's better to error on the generous side with taxes than to risk raising a red flag.

You can also deduct some or all of your office space as a percentage of the total square footage of your house - assuming your office is in your house.

~Newbie Shield~

unselfishbuddy
Forums Member
Joined: 14 Sep 2008
Posts: 63
#8 · Posted: 6 Feb 2009 11:45


Yes you can have those as deductions provided that you only take a certain percentage. It is up to you what that percentage is. It all depends on much you use it for business. (eg. 25%, 50% etc.)

__________________
seeyalater72
Forums Member
Joined: 5 Mar 2008
Posts: 197
#9 · Posted: 6 Feb 2009 12:05


I spoke with an auditor while preparing my taxes this year and she said if you have a home office you're allowed to take a percentage deduction on your household expenses(home phone, gas, water, electrical, internet, etc.) based upon the sq footage of the office to the sq footage of the home. So say if you have a home office that is 300 sq ft and your home is 3000 total sq ft you can deduct 10% of your household expenses as 300 is 10% of 3000.

As far as cell phone usage, she indicated that I could take whatever the estimated percentage use was for business. So if I estimated that 50% of my cell use was for business and my total cell bill for year was $2000 than I could deduct $1000. But of course make sure you have the proper documentation to back up these deductions.

__________________
Your Reply
   :) ;) :-( ... Disable smilies

» Username  » Password 
Only registered users are allowed to post here. Please enter your login/password details upon posting a message, or sign up first.
Messages not conforming to the forum rules will not be approved or, deleted without any explanation.
Please do not post email addresses. If essential, obfuscate them (user [at] domain.com or something like that).
Please do not apply BOLD to entire post.
Please do not post Titles in all CAPS.
 


Page loading time (secs): 0.046

Custom Search
Member Ranking · Terms of Use · Privacy Policy · About Us · Contact Us · Support Us · Friends

© 2004-2011 Work at Home Forum. All rights reserved.