How To Write-Off General Business Expenses

On today’s Tax Tuesday, host Troy Butler, Senior Manager of Bookkeeping at Anderson, speaks with Jeff Webb, CPA, Vice-President of Professional Services at Anderson about some timely tax questions around deductions and payroll. The discussion also addresses some detailed information around bookkeeping including services offered by Anderson, and other apps and software that are best for certain situations. Submit your tax questions to taxtuesday@andersonadvisors.

Highlights/Topics:

• "How do you write-off classes or courses, cars, equipment, or anything in general? What is the process? What do you keep? How do you show your proof of funds spent?" In a C-corp, you're allowed to take education for new lines of business. Other entity types, you're only allowed to deduct education for business tha you’re already doing.
• "What's the best way to get payroll started? I want to start with hiring a couple of part time employees." - I highly recommend using a third-party for payroll. I don't recommend that you do it yourself, unless you have a full-time dedicated bookkeeper that this is their job.
• "Can I deduct expenses for working from home, and what forms can I use?" - What we recommend, typically, is that if you have an entity such as a corporation or even a partnership, you do administrative home reimbursement.
• "What's the best way to record startup expenses incurred on your private accounts?" There's a lot to read there, so we'll go on to the next one. - Startup costs, organizational costs are actually intangible assets, and those intangible assets get amortized.
• "Which bookkeeping app would you recommend for four units or less landlords to make our tax preparation easier for all of us?" - QuickBooks is always good. I like QuickBooks Online.
• "Can we discuss how our bookkeeping service works?" I can do that pretty well. "We're drowning in Excel and Quicken." - We have several different services we offer here at Anderson. The flagship one is called full service bookkeeping, and that's where we're going to do your books on a monthly basis.
• "What are common expense categories I should use?" - There are lots and lots of templates of charts of accounts out there that can give you a good baseline. For our Platinum members, we offer some generalized templates.
• "Can I discuss some big picture strategies to help with bookkeeping automation/AI?"
• “We have a physician set up their PLLC in New York State. Do I need to set up payroll, give myself W2? How much do they pay themselves to avoid an IRS audit? What's the bookkeeping needed? How do I take the remaining money out as a distribution?" That's seven questions in one. They're getting their money's worth out of that one.
• “What are the minimum requirements to do so and suggested curiosity of tasking?" – If you have a ton of activity, and a week's worth of transactions takes you four hours to do, then you probably shouldn't wait a whole lot of time to do your bookkeeping. At the minimum, I would recommend doing your books quarterly.
• "If our business is still paying off business debt from previous tax years, how do we account for that as far as bookkeeping and reporting?” - If you take out a loan, and you're making payments against that loan, those loan payments aren't expenses, except for the interest on that loan.
• “How does the bookkeeping service integrate with the accounting service?" – If you're using us for bookkeeping and using us for tax, we will coordinate your tax return with your tax preparer. Your bookkeeping team will work with your client tax coordinators/tax preparer

Resources:

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