Where on schedule C should a PO Box Rental fee go?
"Turbotax community had a similar question. They claim you just put it into ""Office Expense"".  I never understood why there are so many categories when they are just summed up and subtracted from your income. How can you possibly get in trouble for putting something in a wrong column if the final tax liability doesn't change."
"You would put your earnings (and expenses, don't forget) on Schedule C, and then do a Schedule SE for self-employment tax. http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98846,00.html 1040ES isn't used to compute taxes, it's used to pay taxes. Generally you are supposed to pay taxes as you go, rather than when you file. There are exceptions where you won't be penalized for paying when you file, ""most taxpayers will avoid this penalty if they owe less than $1,000 in tax after subtracting their withholdings and credits, or if they paid at least 90% of the tax for the current year, or 100% of the tax shown on the return for the prior year, whichever is smaller"" from http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc306.html  i.e. there's a safe harbor as long as you pay as much as you owed the year before. If you owe a lot at the end of the year a second time in a row, then you get penalized." I was only able to find Maryland form 1 to fit your question, so I'll assume you're referring to this form. Note the requirement: Generally all tangible personal property owned, leased, consigned or   used by the business and located within the State of Maryland on   January 1, 201 must be reported. Software license (whether time limited or not, i.e.: what you consider as rental vs purchase) is not tangible property, same goes to the license for the course materials. Note, with digital media - you don't own the content, you merely paid for the license to use it. Design books may be reportable as personal tangible property, and from your list that's the only thing I think should be reported. However, having never stepped a foot in Maryland and having never seen (or even heard of) this ridiculous form before, I'd suggest you verify my humble opinion with a tax adviser (EA/CPA) licensed in the State of Maryland to confirm my understanding of this form. I've actually had the same problem several years running, and it's solved by filing my corporate taxes, then taking those schedules, and applying them to my 1040, along with a Schedule C  You'll want to work with an accountant on this, but basically you're going to take the total set of business expenses as 1 chunk, then write them off your income (as one chunk).  I always recommend an accountant for this, but that's the general idea that I've used, and for the last 10 years, it's worked great. I wasn't making an argument to shutter the PO but that they are in a declining market and have to adapt.  They can't meet their pension obligation and they will have to prune their urban services and curtail their most costly routes. Tax payers will not tolerate an antiquated business just for the sake of tradition or the convenience of a minority.  I live on a rural route and can live with once a week mail service.  I can also live with a half day post office.  Let the cutting commence. A basement unit would typically rent for less than similar space on a higher floor.  Taxwise, you should be claiming the income, and expenses via schedule E, as if it were legal. Keep in mind, Al Capone was convicted on tax evasion  not his other illegal activities. As long as you treat it as a legitimate business, a rental unit, you will be good with the IRS. The local building department will fine you if they find out. Yes, use a separate Form 8829 for each home used for business during the year. The top of 8829 includes that exact instruction. While I'm not an accountant, this is how I do this for my personal   accounting: Note, if you don't want the expense to take effect right away meaning   it'll affect your Profits, then the transaction date here needs to be   something in the future, then when you hit that date and the bill is   still not paid, you just unpost the bill and repost again with a new   date . So you end up with something like the following:   4. Now you post the invoice to Liabilities:Accounts Payable:The Cable Company, the invoice due date should reflect what you had in the invoice. This is important as gnucash will warn you that your bill is due if you want to pay it every time it starts:  When you're ready to pay the bill, just find the bill and click pay invoice. If it's already paid and you imported transactions from your bank, find the transaction then right click and click assign as payment then choose your invoice. Note: I've being using this to also record cheques that are given to   people but not cashed yet. I hope that helps. This sounds like a rental fee as described in the instructions for the 1099-MISC.   Enter amounts of $600 or more for all types of rents, such as    any of the following. ... Non-Employee compensation does not seem appropriate because you did not perform a service. You mention that your tax-preparer brought this up.  I think you will need to consult with a CPA to receive a more reliable opinion.  Make sure to bring the contract that describes the situation with you.  From there, you may need to consult a tax attorney, but the CPA should be able to help you figure out what your next step is. "From the IRS perspective, there's no difference between ""your taxes"" and ""your sole proprietorship's taxes"", they're all just ""your taxes"". While I could see it being very useful and wise to track your business's activities separately, and use separate bank accounts and the like, this is just a convenience to help you in your personal accounting, and not something that needs to relate directly to how tax forms are completed or taxes are paid. When calculating your taxes, if you want to figure out how much ""you"" owe vs. how much ""your business"" owes, you'll have to do so yourself. One approach might be just to take the amount that your Schedule C puts as income on your return and multiply by your marginal tax rate. Another approach might be to have your tax software run the calculations as though you had no business income, and see what just ""your personal"" taxes would have been without the business. If you think of the business income as being ""first"" and should use up the lower brackets rather than your personal income, maybe do it the other way around and have your software run the calculations as though you had only the business income and no other personal/investment income, and see what the amount of taxes would be then. Once you've figured out a good allocation, the actual mechanics of paying some ""personal tax amount"" from your personal bank account and some ""business tax amount"" from your business bank account are up to you. I'd probably just transfer the money from my business account to my personal account and pay all the taxes from the personal account. Writing two separate checks, one from each account, that total to the correct amount, I'm sure would work just fine as well. You can probably make separate payments from each account electronically through Direct Pay or EFTPS as well. As long as all taxes are paid by the deadline, I don't think the IRS is too picky about the details of how many payments are made." "Depending on the nature of the expenses, you will enter them under Deductions, on lines 9 through 20. Did you rent an office? Add the rental expense to line 13. Fee for a business license? Line 14. Everything else that doesn't fall into any specific category goes on line 20 (You'll need to attach a small statement that breaks out the expense categories, e.g. office supplies, phone, legal fees, etc.)  Expenses that are entered in the Income section are costs directly related to sales, such as merchant fees that you pay to a bank if you take payments by credit card. Since you said the partnership has ""zero money coming in,"" I assume that it currently has no revenues, so all the fields in the Income section would be zero." On line 21 of Schedule D, you write the smaller of So, in your case, since your Line 16 shows a loss of more than $3000 on Line 21, you write 3000 on Line 21 (the parentheses indicating that is it a negative number are already included on the form). Also, you write (3000) on Form 1040 Line 13. The rest of the loss is a carryover to next year (be sure to fill out the Capital Loss Carryover Worksheet where the carryover to next year is computed). Summary: you cannot write 0 on Line 21 of Schedule D and carry over the entire loss to next year. You must deduct $3000 this year and carry over the rest of the loss to next year. Through your question and then clarification through the comments, it looks like you have a U.S. LLC with at least two members.  If you did not elect some other tax treatment, your LLC will be treated as a partnership by the IRS.  The partnership should file a tax return on Form 1065.  Then each partner will get a Schedule K-1 from the partnership, which the partner should use to include their respective shares of the partnership income and expenses on their personal Forms 1040. You can also elect to be taxed as an S-Corp or a C-Corp instead of a partnership, but that requires you to file a form explicitly making such election.  If you go S-Corp, then you will file a different form for the company, but the procedure is roughly the same - Income gets passed through to the owners via a Schedule K-1.  If you go C-Corp, then the owners will pay no tax on their own Form 1040, but the C-Corp itself will pay income tax. As far as whether you should try to spend the money as business expense to avoid paying extra tax - That's highly dependent on your specific situation.  I'd think you'd want to get tailored advice for that. It depends on the structure of your business. Are you a sole proprietor filing Schedule C on your 1040, or an S-corp, or part of a partnership? The treatment of a home office will differ depending on business entity. The most important thing to do when moving is to change your address with the post office. This will forward most mail for a year, and even automatically send change of address notices to many businesses that send mail to you. If you do this, and the IRS needs to send you something over the next year, you'll get it.  The IRS does have a procedure for changing your address, and you would want to do this if you are expecting something from the IRS and are unable to do a change of address with the post office for some reason. But if you do forward your mail and you aren't expecting a refund check, I don't think it is necessary. The IRS will get your new address when you file your return next year. i prepaid roughly $400 at closing into escrow. that's my minimum allowable balance. paid in all year, and now taxes and insurance are paid in december. after december, they're projecting a $200 balance, which is $200 too low. homeowners insurance hasn't changed, pmi hasn't changed, property taxes are virtually identical to estimate at closing. the difference is that the $400 initial payment didn't factor in timing of those payments out of escrow. pretty lame if you ask me.