category for professional memberships and subscriptions

lukester

What category should be used for professional memberships like chamber of commerce, local realtor groups, and business related subscriptions such as publications or online services like Amazon Business?

jacobs

Are you using Business & Personal, or Deluxe/Premier?

in either case, don't hesitate to create a new category (or two) and name it whatever sound best to you. Just make are you know what expenses are potentially tax deductible and which aren't.

For personally deductible purposes, you first need to know if you will likely itemize deductions rather than take the standard deduction. Professional associations are one of those areas that can be deductible but may not be fully deductible. If this is something you pay as an individual (not a business), you first need to be aware that professional associations are miscellaneous deduction on Schedule A, which mean they only count if they exceed 2% of you adjusted gross income. So if you and your spouse have an AGI of $250,000, will your miscellaneous deductions likely exceed $5,000 a year? Then, you need to know what percentage of your membership fee, if any, is used for things like recruitment of new members, for social events, for lobbying or for political contributions — because none of those purposes can be taken as a tax deduction.

If this is a business, the next question is if your business is part of your personal tax return (Schedule C), or if you have a separate legal entity which files its own business return. (Quicken does pretty well with the former, less well with the latter.) If you're using Business & Personal, you'll just want to make sure you define the category as Business and assign it to the proper Schedule C tax line.

jacobs

Are you using Business & Personal, or Deluxe/Premier?

in either case, don't hesitate to create a new category (or two) and name it whatever sound best to you. Just make are you know what expenses are potentially tax deductible and which aren't.

For personally deductible purposes, you first need to know if you will likely itemize deductions rather than take the standard deduction. Professional associations are one of those areas that can be deductible but may not be fully deductible. If this is something you pay as an individual (not a business), you first need to be aware that professional associations are miscellaneous deduction on Schedule A, which mean they only count if they exceed 2% of you adjusted gross income. So if you and your spouse have an AGI of $250,000, will your miscellaneous deductions likely exceed $5,000 a year? Then, you need to know what percentage of your membership fee, if any, is used for things like recruitment of new members, for social events, for lobbying or for political contributions — because none of those purposes can be taken as a tax deduction.

If this is a business, the next question is if your business is part of your personal tax return (Schedule C), or if you have a separate legal entity which files its own business return. (Quicken does pretty well with the former, less well with the latter.) If you're using Business & Personal, you'll just want to make sure you define the category as Business and assign it to the proper Schedule C tax line.