All right, everyone. We are going to go ahead and get started. So my name is Laurie Delk Radecki, and we do training each week here. And so tonight i’m going to talk about one of the biggest things for having benefits for having an at home based Business is all the things that you can write off, all the things that you can save on your taxes. And so i’m just going to go over a few different points of ideas of what you can write off, what you can keep track of, and the type of money you can save.
So if you don’t have a home based business, you’re missing out on all these tax deductions. So that’s one huge thing. Reason and benefit of why you want to start a any type of home based business.
the first one, of course, is keep track of everything.
For example, if you’re buying paper for your office, save the receipt I use, quicken to keep track of all my transactions, and I can put them in different categories, and I can organize them.
You can put them for, if you drive to the store for your meetings, you want to save those. If you’re buying lunches with your team or having lunches with prospects or hotels, anything that can be used in your business. You can keep track of it. You can use it as a deduction and claim it off your taxes, so you don’t have to pay as much in taxes.
So another thing is to write off your workspace – so like here you can see i’m in my office here, so I have a dedicated workspace, but I don’t have to sit in my office all the time right because I have a laptop. I can sit wherever I want, and a lot of people Don’t have a dedicated workspace, and that’s fine, too. You can still write off a percent of your home, even if it’s not a dedicated workspace.
You just have to figure out what that percentage is compared to your house, and you want to save that. whatever that is, it can be up to 300 square feet, so it can’t be more than that. But and of course always i’m not a tax accountant, so you always check with your tax accountant it for you know the rules for your State or your area, or whatever. But you can also write off that same amount of percentage for utilities & insurance & your mortgage.
All those things you can write off.
You can write off those for utilities and for any other type of deductions and your office space.
The next one is for updating your equipment. So you always want to update your equipment like you could think about a lot of times. People say I don’t want to spend the money on a new laptop or whatever your office furniture, software for your computer anything can be a 100% deduction the year it’s acquired. And so there’s no reason to not update things. You want to get things updated and have them because you can write them off on your business.
another thing you can do to write off on your taxes is to save for retirement, so you can save money towards your retirement. You can write off the contributions to
to your to your retirement. You can write those off also, as you’re saving them and saving for your retirement.
Another thing is talking to clients. So when you’re talking to clients you can write off a percent of your phone. If you talk to clients on it. So i’m on my phone almost all day with clients. And so you can write off a percent of that to your clients as well.
So then also like your Internet, if you use it in your business, you can also write your Internet off. So figure out a percent that your devices that you use for your Internet in your business and think about the cost versus the business and your household versus the business and you can deduct that accordingly. And so you just want to think about like how many devices you have on the Internet. So you know, you might have your like. I have my desk in my office, and then I have my phone, and then I have my laptop. But then we also have the TV. So that’s all personal, You know. My husband has a phone, and my husband has a laptop. So you want to think about all the things, and then you can only do that to percentage portion of that.
Then like lunches and dinners. So if you take a client out to eat, or even if you just pay for yourself. But you’re talking about business. You’re meeting people. So if you go to like networking lunch, you can write that off for business. If you if you meet people for a one on one after the luncheons, to get to know people and talk to them about your business, you could write those off. If you take your team out to dinner, you can write that off.
Then also like business trips. So anywhere you go you could write that off, so a 100% of travel expenses can be wrote off there. Those are deductible, and then about 50% normally on meals. Same thing. I’m not a tax accountant, so you always want to check with your tax professional on that. But you want to keep your receipts. You want to make sure that you’re keeping track of all your expenses and all your receipts and so but anything on travel expenses. So your flight, your mileage on the car, your
your food while you’re eating out on your business trip, so like we have an event in Orlando, Florida next month. I plan to fly down. I’ll be staying in a hotel.
and so we can stay an extra day and go to the beach. Now that part you can’t write off, but you can write off because I flew down there for the event, so I can write that off. I can right off staying in the hotel.
So you want to think of those things. So whenever you have business trips, or even if you want to take a vacation turn it into a business trip, do business while you’re on the trip and, like I tell a lot of times. My team, you know, have an event in your area. Invite 20 people into the room, and i’ll fly out and or drive out and come speak there for you, and I can write that off on business, and we get to take a little mini vacation with it. So it’s a neat way. You can do that. I used to do that with my kids as they were growing up. I would always have them fly with me on my business trips, or we would drive and we would always stay an extra day or 2 to do different things. And but then that was wrote off on business, too.
So and then the last thing is, employ your family so you can deduct their salaries. I used to give my kids things to do. I trained them on doing different things for me, my youngest daughter. I didn’t even start texting until she was 18. She always had my phone, and she would read me what the text would say, and I would answer her. And because the kids, of course, could type way faster than I could.
but employ your family. You can deduct their salaries and the cool thing is, kids under 17. They don’t have. They don’t incur those social security taxes, and yet you can also teach them to save. You can teach them to save money every month, and even before you know they’re of age to go work at a business. You can be employing them and and giving them things to do to help you.
I still have My daughter helps me to to this day going to different events, and she will run the signing table for me, or she will do camera videos for me. I teach her all those different things, and then I can pay her to do those things. That’s a tax. Write off.
So those are a few of the things for ideas on writing stuff off on taxes. I’m. Going to go ahead and stop the recording and open it up for our live Q. A.
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