If you have a home office, make sure it is used exclusively as an office, Minimal personal use of the office space will deny the home office deduction. De minimus personal use (you store a vacuum cleaner in the office or you have to walk through the office to go to the bathroom) is allowed, but the law is set up as pretty much all or nothing.
Brian’s Tax Musings
When you take an entertainment deduction, make sure you do the followingEither write on the receipt who you took out or record it in an entertainment dairy.Make sure the entertainment occurs in a “business setting” so that business can be discussed. If you are going to a concert or a basketball game with a business associate, make sure there is a business setting you can discuss business at before or after the event. To be deductible, business has to be discussed.Record the elements of substantiation (who, what, where, when, why and how much). If you have all these things, you have a deductible entertainment expense. Even if it is lavish, it is deductible. Lavishness is not a disallowable offense according to an IRS audit guide for attorneys that has since been combined with the standard guide for all business taxpayers.
Brian’s General Musings
Sorry, no posting on the 4th of July. As on every other Independence Day since 1996, we were scanning the mountain tops for 15 mile long alien spaceships. I am sure Will Smith was at a barbeque this year as well. (Make sure you watch ‘Independence Day’ again; still one of my favorate invasion movies.)FInished setting up the second office. Amazing how 190 square feet shrinks when you put two desks. two chairs, a lateral file and assorted other stuff in it. Here is a picture