Year End Tax Tips for Home Businesses

Someone recently asked me what they could do now to make tax time easier for this upcoming tax season.

The best thing you can do is to think about taxes before then year ends.  Most people wait until the tax filing deadline before they ask how they can reduce their income taxes.  Unfortunately, once 2007 ends, there’s very little you can do to minimize your taxes for 2007. 

To start your tax planning, you should review your income, deductions and withholdings before the year ends.  Which means you need to get your bookkeeping caught up!  You should use a software program, such as QuickBooks, Quicken Home and Business, or spreadsheets to keep track of your income and expenses for your business.

Standard Mileage Rate Going Up in 2008

The IRS just announced that the standard mileage rate will be 50.5
cents per mile in 2008.  This is up from 48.5 cents per mile in 2007.

If you’re not keeping track of your mileage, you need to start now!
These rates are higher than we’ve ever seen, so you should be keeping
track of every business mile driven.

You can use a spiral notebook to keep track of miles, you can
purchase a mileage log from any office supply store, or you can use my
own mileage log, found here.

How to Avoid a Holiday Spending Hangover

Ah the holidays… a time for parties, over eating, and over spending.  Americans routinely overspend during the holidays, often resulting in increasing credit card debt to go along with that increasing waistline from too much pumpkin pie. 

The holidays are stressful enough.  Don’t add to that stress by overspending your holiday budget.  Here are ten tips to help you save time, money and stress this shopping season:

Top 5 Missed Business Tax Deductions

I spoke about tax tips for small business owners at a seminar this past weekend, and one of the questions I got was ‘what are the top missed business deductions?’

This is a great question, so here goes…

1.  Automobile expenses - if you use your car for business, you can deduct a portion of your car expenses.  You can either keep track of and deduct your (business related) actual expenses, or you can keep track of your business miles and use the standard mileage rate (48.5 cents per mile in 2007).