Tax Deductions Every Small Business Owner Should Know About
Maximize your write-offs and minimize your tax bill with this essential list of deductions for freelancers, startups, and small businesses.
A deduction only helps if you can support it later. The deductions below are the ones we see used correctly, most often — the value isn't just knowing they exist, it's keeping the records that let you claim them without a fight if you're ever asked to prove it.
Home office
If you have a dedicated workspace used only for business, part of your rent, utilities, internet, and insurance may be deductible — either the simplified method ($5 per square foot) or actual expenses. "Dedicated" is doing a lot of work in that sentence: a corner of the kitchen table that also hosts family dinner doesn't qualify.
Vehicle use
Business use of a personal vehicle is deductible by standard mileage rate or actual expenses, but only with a contemporaneous mileage log — trip-by-trip, not reconstructed from memory in March. An app like MileIQ solves this cheaply; a shoebox of gas receipts doesn't.
Equipment and supplies
Most work-related purchases qualify, from a laptop to a box of printer paper. Larger equipment purchases may qualify for Section 179 depreciation, which can let you deduct the full cost in the year purchased rather than spreading it over several years — worth a conversation with your CPA before a large purchase, not after.
Marketing and advertising
Ad spend, website hosting, design work, software subscriptions tied to promoting the business — generally fully deductible, and one of the more commonly under-tracked categories because the charges are small and frequent rather than large and memorable.
Professional services
Fees paid to lawyers, bookkeeping professionals, consultants, or virtual assistants are deductible business expenses.
Education and training
Courses, books, and workshops that improve skills directly used in the business can typically be written off as professional development.
What actually makes deductions defensible
None of the categories above are complicated. What trips people up is the record behind the claim:
- A business credit card, kept separate from personal spending, so nothing has to be untangled later
- Receipts kept digitally as they happen, not gathered in a January scramble
- Expenses categorized correctly in the books throughout the year, not reconstructed at tax time
That last one is the actual point of this post. A deduction you can't support with clean records is a deduction you're gambling on. Bookkeeping that's current and categorized correctly all year is what turns "we think we spent about that much on marketing" into a number your CPA can actually use.
See how we keep books current all year in our back office, or if the records are already behind, start with clean-up bookkeeping.
Bulverde Business Solutions provides bookkeeping and financial operations services. Not a CPA firm; no tax or attest services. Talk to your CPA about which deductions apply to your specific situation.
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(830) 666-0417 · Bulverde, Texas · Not a CPA firm.
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