Car as business expense, but not because of driving
"To be deductible, a business expense must be both ordinary and necessary. An ordinary expense is one that is common and accepted in your trade or business. A necessary expense is one that is helpful and appropriate for your trade or business. An expense does not have to be indispensable to be considered necessary.  (IRS, Deducting Business Expenses) It seems to me you'd have a hard time convincing an auditor that this is the case.  Since business don't commonly own cars for the sole purpose of housing $25 computers, you'd have trouble with the ""ordinary"" test.  And since there are lots of other ways to house a computer other than a car, ""necessary"" seems problematic also."
Keep this rather corny acronym in mind. Business expenses must be CORN: As other posters have already pointed out, certain expenses that are capital items (computers, furniture, etc.) must be depreciated over several years, but you have a certain amount of capital items that you can write off in the current tax year. Here are the general guidelines on what you should report and pay - but the overall rule is that if it's not a business-related cost then you can't claim it. In your example, a client meeting may warrant a claim for 'entertaining clients' which could be claimed as a business cost - but buying yourself a coffee to get out of the house isn't a business cost. Two adages come to mind. Never finance a depreciating asset. If you can't pay cash for a car, you can't afford it. If you decide you can finance at a low rate and invest at a higher one, you're leveraging your capital.  The risk here is that your investment drops in value, or your cash flow stops and you are unable to continue payments and have to sell the car, or surrender it. There are fewer risks if you buy the car outright.  There is one cost that is not considered though.  Opportunity cost.   Since you've declared transportation necessary, I'd say that opportunity cost is worth the lower risk, assuming you have enough cash left after buying a car to fund your emergency fund. Which brings me to my final point.  Be sure to buy a quality used car, not a new one.  Your emergency fund should be able to replace the car completely, in the case of a total loss where you are at fault and the loss is not covered by insurance. TLDR: My opinion is that it would be better to pay for a quality, efficient, basic transportation car up front than to take on a debt. I contacted Stephen Fishman, J.D., the author of Home Business Tax Deductions, to let him know that this question was missing from his book. He was kind enough to send a reply. My original phrasing of the question: If your car is used for both business and personal use, and you deduct via the actual expense method, do trips to the mechanic, gas station, and auto parts store to service or repair the car count as business miles, personal miles, or part-business-part-personal miles? What about driving the newly-purchased car home from the dealership? And his response: Good question. I can find nothing about this in IRS publication or elsewhere. However, common sense would tell us that the cost of driving to make car repairs should be deductible. If you use your car for business, it is a business expense, just like transporting any other piece of business equipment for repairs is a business expense. This should be so whether you use the standard mileage rate or actual expense method. You should probably reduce the amount of your deduction by the percentage of personal use of the car during the year. The same goes for driving a car home from the dealer. Approximately 25% of all cars sold last year were leased, which is the highest on record. When you are leasing you don't own the car, instead you are basically renting it for a fixed term, and turning it back to the dealership.  It is very cost effective, because the manufacturers have a keen interest in making lots of cars. They are often subsidizing the lease by giving incentives to the dealer. They are gambling on the future value of their cars. They can lose on that gamble. The car business has turned into a financial nightmare for the car companies; they have huge development costs as the cars become more like mobile computing platforms loaded with sensors, and software that is constantly changing.  They can't hold a model for 20 years like Mercedes was able to do in the past. Now they have to constantly update their products. The only way to survive as a car maker is to pump out volume, and the leasing programs, which are quietly being underwritten by the manufacturers help them increase the production quantities, which helps lower the fixed development costs. If only the defense contractors could do this! they are stuck spending billions to build 20 planes, and so each one has a staggering price tag.  In the future, the car companies that will survive are those that have terrific credit, and low borrowing costs. That means Japanese and Germans will own the car business entirely in the end, and countries with higher borrowing costs (like America and Brasil) will not be competitive. Luckily Ford is so frugal, due to the lingering spirit of  its founder, that they can hold out. One thing strongly in favor of leasing is that you have zero maintenance costs typically. The repair risk is significant in luxury cars.  When you buy a 10 year old BMW, and when the tranny goes, it costs a fortune. Having a superb car for 30 months for a few hundred bucks a month is something a lot of people enjoy doing. Who can blame them? you spend an hour or 2 a day in your car, and why not live in a nice place? You've got two options.  Deduct the business portion of the depreciation and actual expenses for operating the car.  Use the IRS standard mileage rate of $.575/mile in 2015. Multiply your business miles by the rate to calculate your deduction.  Assuming you're a sole proprietor you'll include a Schedule C to your return and claim the deduction on that form. For stocks, bonds, ETF funds and so on - Taxed only on realised gain and losses are deductible from the gain and not from company's income. Corporate tax is calculated only after all expenses have been deducted. Not the other way around. Real estate expenses can be deducted because of repairs and maintenance.  In general all expenses related to the operation of the business can be deducted. But you cannot use expenses as willy nilly, as you assume. You cannot deduct your subscription to Playboy as an expense. Doing it is illegal and if caught, the tours to church will increase exponentially. VAT is only paid if you claim VAT on your invoices. Your situation seems quite complicated. I would suggest, get an accountant pronto. There are nuances in your situation, which an accountant only can understand and help. I'm not an expert, but here's my $0.02. Deductions for business expenses are subject to the 2% rule. In other words, you can only deduct that which exceeds 2% of your AGI (Adjusted Gross Income). For example, say you have an AGI of $50,000, and you buy a laptop that costs $800. You won't get a write-off from that, because 2% of $50,000 is $1,000, and you can only deduct business-related expenses in excess of that $1,000. If you have an AGI of $50,000 and buy a $2,000 laptop, you can deduct a maximum of $1,000 ($2,000 minus 2% of $50,000 is $2,000 - $1,000 = $1,000). Additionally, you can write off the laptop only to the extent that you use it for business. So in other words, if you have an AGI of $50,000 and buy that $2,000 laptop, but only use it 50% for business, you can only write off $500. Theoretically, they can ask for verification of the business use of your laptop. A log or a diary would be what I would provide, but I'm not an IRS agent. It's my understand that leasing is never the better overall deal, with the possible exception of a person who would otherwise buy a brand new car every 2 or 3 years, and does not drive a lot of miles. Note: in the case of a company car, Canadian taxes let you deduct the entire lease payment (which clearly has some principal in it) if you lease, while if you buy you can only deduct the interest, and must depreciate the car according to their schedule. This can make leasing more attractive to those buying a car through a corporation. I don't know if this applies in the US. The numbers you ran through in class presumably involved calculating the interest paid over the term of the loan. Can you not just redo the calculation using actual interest and lease numbers from a randomly chosen current car ad? I suspect if you do, you will discover leasing is still not the right choice. Also, depending where you buy the car in the US, you have to pay property tax every year for just having purchased the car. The best way to do this is to pay for the entire car, including gas, insurance, and repairs, from S-corp funds, then meticulously track how many miles are used for personal and how many miles for business. If you pay with S-corp funds, you will claim the personal miles as a taxable benefit from the S-corp on your personal return. The S-corp can then claim all the expenses and depreciation on the vehicle, reducing the S-corp's tax liability. No, you can't claim personal expenses as business expenses. What is the alternative to paying someone to do your chores? Letting the chores go undone.  How does it affect your business if your household chores go undone? It doesn't; it only affects your personal life--that's why they are personal expenses. Yes, you will be able to claim it as an expense on your taxes, but not all in the current year. It is split into three categories: Current Expenses - Assets purchased such as inventory would be able to be claimed in the current year.  Assets - Vehicles, Buildings, and equipment can be depreciated over time based on the value you purchased them for and the CCA class. Goodwill - In tax terms this is the value of the business purchase that is not eligible in 1 or 2 and is called Eligible Capital Property. This can be expensed over time.  From info at CRA website: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/bsnss/tpcs/lf-vnts/byng/menu-eng.html "Partly I suspect this is selection bias. You say you see so many luxury cars go by. But if you're looking for them, you're going to notice them. Have you calculated the actual percentage? Do they make up 50% of the cars that pass a specific point in a specific period of time? Or just 10% if you really counted? You say you live in Baltimore county, Maryland. That's a relatively wealthy area, so I'd expect the percentage of luxury cars to be higher than the national average. You'd likely see considerably fewer in the backwoods of Mississippi. That said, some people who own luxury cars can't really afford them. I'm reminded of a wonderful TV commercial I saw recently where a man is showing off all his material goods, he talks about his big house, and his swimming pool, and his fancy car, with a big smile on his face, standing tall, and generally looking proud and happy. And then he says, ""How do I do it?"" And suddenly his expression changes to complete despair, he slumps down, and says, ""I'm in debt up to my eyeballs."" It turns out to be a commercial for a debt-counseling service. Some people put very high value on owning a fancy car and are willing to sacrifice on other things. If having a big fancy car is more important to you then, say, having a nice house or the latest computer or a big screen TV or dining out more often or going on more expensive vacations or whatever you have to give up to get the car, well, that's your decision. Personally I don't care much about a fancy car, I just want something that gets me where I want to go. And I've always figured that with an expensive car, you have to constantly worry about getting in an accident and damaging or destroying it. If you put your money into a big fancy house, at least houses rarely collide with each other. Personally, I make a nice income too. And I have a $500/month mortgage and zero car payment because I drive a 2003 pickup that I bought with cash. But I have two kids in college and I'm trying to get them through with no debt, that's where all my money is going." "Using a ""vehicle"" is a common technique to isolate project-specific risk from the remainder of the company. There's not any problem with the vehicle making zero paper profits, it was only ever a paper company.   The dodgy bit is when they start offering remuneration to participants based on the vehicle's profits - anyone with any sense goes on gross.  Or when they are artificially shifting the profits around for tax reasons."