So, I have been “consulting” on the side and will be
getting a 1099 at the end of the year.
They just cut me checks for the hours, to taxes taken out.
It will be no where near enough money to push me out of my tax bracket, but I still want to mitigate my tax responsibility.
I could really use some new tools and things to help get things done…
Can I write off stuff that I buy as to offset what I might make?
I’m OK having the business be a terrible failure from a business standpoint. 
thats why i get cash when consulting.
That’s funny, so does your mom. :nono:
Anyways dude, good luck. I’m sure the yellow pages could help you if you couldn’t find some excellent counsel here.
Their finance people don’t want to be yelled at by their corporate finance people’s corporate finance people.
What type of consulting have you been doing?
EX: It’s hard to write off tools like socket sets if you’re a software engineer.
The two years I did a whole lot of software consulting I wrote off stuff like:
Interest on the car I used to get office supplies, meet clients.
Lunches/dinners (under $75 does not require a receipt, just documentation about who was there and what was discussed).
Kept a mileage log and found some way to relate most trips the business (picked up stamps, paper, postits… anything so it was business related).
Declared a large part of my downstairs my office, so that percentage of my mortgage and utilities was deductible. (be careful here, if you’re audited the space has to be dedicated use. Aka, if you use a room as an office and a spare bedroom it doesn’t count).
Made sure anything that could remotely be justified as a business expense went on the business side.
Its PC Board Layout, Documentation, Assembly, and test.
Then I mate them with the rest of the mechanical parts and test
the units using labview.
It was my old job
So, its electrical, mechanical, and software related:)
I have to get stuff welded for me too.
I would be happy writing off 50% of a laptop or something.
100% writeoff on a laptop easy with that type of work. I wrote of my Inspiron 6000, a printer, all the ink\paper I used that year, a window AC unit (told my tax guy it was to keep the office where I keep servers running cool) and lots of other stuff only remotely related to my business.
Bottom line, don’t be afraid to get creative, especially if you have a tax guy to bounce ideas off so you stay in the gray area that you can defend on the rare chance you get audited. NY and the feds fuck you extra hard, no lube, on “self employment” income like this. By the time everyone gets paid its almost 50% on profit. So you need to do EVERYTHING you can think of to get that self employment income cut down by expenses and caritable donations because you are taxed on profit, not on net. Not that I would ever condone lying on a tax form, but Amvets generally gives you a blank signed receipt so you can fill out exactly what you dropped off yourself.
Also, look into “depreciated assets”. I’m still not 100% sure how it worked by basically he gave me a worksheet to list every thing in my home office that I didn’t buy when I started consulting but did use. Ex, my desk, lamps, filing cabinets, a couple old servers, a desktop PC, fax machine etc etc. The worksheet listed the new and current value and he did something to use all that stuff as a writeoff as well.
JayS…were you 1099’ed for your work or did you track it as self employment?
1099’d but it still gets classified as self employment, complete with NY’s BS self employment tax.