Can I write off Spotify as a business expense? (2023)

Can Spotify be written off?

It is possible to deduct your subscriptions to music streaming services such as Spotify, Soundcloud, AppleMusic and others, on one condition: you need to use the service as part of your work and you need to be able to prove it (for example, no firewall that prevents Spotify from being at the office) , etc.).

So, is a gym membership tax deductible for a business? In short, it depends. You can technically expense anything as long as you can prove that it's a business expense. But most of the time, gym membership is deemed a personal expense by HMRC.

Gifts: You can't deduct the entire cost of business gifts. But, you are allowed to deduct the first $25 worth of gifts to clients. Penalties or fines: You cannot write off the costs of any penalties or fines, even if these are incurred during business activities. This includes parking tickets and traffic tickets.

Where an expense is used for both business and personal purposes you can claim tax relief on the business use percentage. E.g. if you use Amazon Prime 50% for personal use and 50% for business use you can claim 50% of the total bill through your business.

Even services like Netflix and software can be deducted as long as you prove that it's needed to stay relevant in your industry. As a rule of thumb, don't try to fool the IRS. But, if you keep a written log that details that you do use hardware and software for work too, you claim the business percentage.

You're only allowed to write off a percentage of a subscription based on how much you use it for work. That means many subscriptions are only partially tax-deductible. After all, there's a natural business and personal use for lots of them. (In that sense, they're pretty similar to most home office expenses.)

Tax Deductions For Business Versus Personal Expenses

The IRS does not let you deduct personal expenses from your taxes. The Court states, expenses such as haircuts, makeup, clothes, manicures, grooming, teeth whitening, hair care, manicures, and other cosmetic surgery are not deductible.

The IRS typically considers the following purchases personal expenses — not business expenses: ✂️ Haircuts and haircare.

This includes the enhanced business meal deduction. For 2021 and 2022 only, businesses can generally deduct the full cost of business-related food and beverages purchased from a restaurant. Otherwise, the limit is usually 50% of the cost of the meal.

Examples of work-related expenses include rent for a car, gas for the car, food, clothing, phone calls, union dues, training, conferences, and book purchases. As a consequence of this, you are allowed to deduct up to $300 worth of business expenditures without providing any proof of purchase.

How much can an LLC write-off?

If you have $50,000 or less in startup costs and are in your first year of business, the IRS allows you to deduct $5,000 in startup costs and $5,000 in organization costs from your taxes. If your startup expenses exceed $50,000, the total deduction will be reduced by however much your expenses exceed $50,000.

Generally, an LLC can deduct the necessary costs of doing business such as salaries, rent, home office deduction, production costs and business equipment.

You cannot deduct membership dues (even if you do business there) for: A country club. A leisure or recreation club.

#1 Filming Expenses

Keep the receipts and as a dedicated video creator, you can absolutely claim back these expenses as tax-deductible.

Subscriptions to technical, scientific, trade, business or professional journals, information services, newspapers and magazines are deductible, provided the subscriptions relate to the production of your assessable income.

You can expense 100% of your iPad under Section 179 and bonus depreciation rules. To qualify for a Section 179 deduction, you'll need to meet a few criteria; namely, you have to use the iPad for business purposes at least 50% of the time.

Car insurance is tax deductible as part of a list of expenses for certain individuals. Generally, people who are self-employed can deduct car insurance, but there are a few other specific individuals for whom car insurance is tax deductible, such as for armed forces reservists or qualified performing artists.

The take away from this is that your standard gym membership or health club membership is a personal expense and is not deductible. Generally, only expenses of this nature directly related to rehabilitation or medical issues are allowed as a deduction on the tax return.

Streamer Expense #5 - Stream Room

If you have a room in your home/apartment that is used strictly for streaming or content creation, you can deduct a portion of your home expenses (or rent costs) on your tax return. You'll file Form 8829 — “Expenses for Business Use of Your Home” to claim the deduction.

According to the IRS, if you make money for something you did then you may be self-employed and that income is reportable to the IRS. It doesn't matter if the income is revenue from Spotify streams, CD sales, or ticket sales on tour. It's all income and it's all reportable.

What are the IRS business expense categories?

Your cellphone as a small business deduction

If you're self-employed and you use your cellphone for business, you can claim the business use of your phone as a tax deduction. If 30 percent of your time on the phone is spent on business, you could legitimately deduct 30 percent of your phone bill.

Not necessarily, according to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Work clothes that can double as street or evening clothes are no more deductible than anything else in your closet. To claim a deduction for buying clothes, the clothes have to be mandatory for your job and unsuitable for everyday wear.

Work clothes are tax deductible if your employer requires you to wear them everyday but they cannot be worn as everyday wear, such as a uniform. However, if your employer requires you to wear suits – which can be worn as everyday wear – you cannot deduct their cost even if you never wear the suits outside of work.

Use it 50% for business and 50% for personal, you can deduct half of the costs. Computers, laptops, notebooks, tablets. Your business expenses must be necessary, customary, and reasonable, according to the IRS. That means that you have to have a business use for your computer or iPad.

The rules surrounding makeup as a tax deduction are strict. Similar to the clothing deduction, you can write off makeup used for stage or photo shoots, but not if you wear the same makeup outside of work.

Transaction fees (the portion taken by OnlyFans) Clothing or Uniform or props or camera equipment used for your OnlyFan Content creation. Self Employment tax deduction (The IRS treats the “employer” portion of the self-employment tax as a business expense and allows you to deduct it accordingly.

An itemized meal receipt should have the name of the establishment, the date of service, the items purchased, the amount paid for each item, and the tax. If the tip is not included in the total it should be written on the receipt.

You won't get to deduct Disney tickets for your family members, but you can probably deduct your own ticket if you take a business associate to the Magic Kingdom. You can deduct this if: A pet is necessary in the ordinary course of your business.

Supporting documents include sales slips, paid bills, invoices, receipts, deposit slips, and canceled checks. These documents contain the information you need to record in your books. It is important to keep these documents because they support the entries in your books and on your tax return.

What happens if you get audited and don't have receipts?

If you get audited and don't have receipts or additional proofs? Well, the Internal Revenue Service may disallow your deductions for the expenses. This often leads to gross income deductions from the IRS before calculating your tax bracket.

Keep proof

all receipts for goods and stock. bank statements, chequebook stubs. sales invoices, till rolls and bank slips.

They require any form of acceptable proof such as receipts, bank statements, credit card statements, cancelled checks, bills or invoices from suppliers and service providers. Without the appropriate documentation, the IRS won't allow your deductions. Remember, it's better to be safe than sorry.

A corporation can only deduct expenses that it incurs. If your cell-phone is registered to you (and not your corporation) and you use your cell phone partially for business purposes, then you can 'charge-back' the business use portion of your cell phone bill to your corporation.

A general Corporation making a Subchapter “S” Election or an LLC with or without a Subchapter S Election pays no federal tax on its taxable income and no employment taxes on its distributions to stockholders.

Sole proprietors or single-member LLCs can deduct gym memberships on Schedule C under the “Expenses” section. Partnerships or multiple-member LLCs use Form 1065, while corporations can expense gym memberships as a deduction on Form 1120.

The biggest difference between an LLC and an independent contractor is the fact that LLCs are required to register with the state and form business documents like articles of organization. LLCs also offer liability protection that independent contractors would not have otherwise.

Thus, the only way to avoid the tax is to dissolve the company. Additionally, another important detail to note is that if you change your business structure during the year–for instance, from an LLC to a C corporation–you would then be subject to the minimum franchise tax on both entities for that year.

As long as you are claiming your auto expenses using your actual expenses rather than the standard mileage rate, then you may deduct the percentage of the cost of your AAA membership as it relates to the business use of your car (Line 9 of the Schedule C).

Can a business write off a golf membership?

As set forth in the new tax rules, any membership dues you pay to a club for business, recreation, leisure, country club, or other social purposes are not deductible. The only exception is if they're included as compensation on an employee's W-2 form.

The Costco membership card is non-transferable, but there are several ways to share the experience with family and friends. Anyone with a card can bring up to two guests to the Warehouse during each visit. Keep in mind that purchasing items is exclusive to Costco members.

Overlay ads (small ads at the bottom of a video) - you only get paid if a viewer clicks on the ad to expand it. Skippable video ads (ads at the start of a video that a viewer can skip after five seconds) - you get paid if a viewer watches the whole ad (or at least 30 seconds if it's longer).

Content creator and influencer write-offs can include electronics, office furniture, advertising, supplies, domain and hosting fees, and insurance. If an item, such as a computer or mobile phone, does double duty for business and personal use, you can only deduct the portion of the expense related to the business use.

According to Code Section 162-A, some YouTubers can write off a car on their taxes as long as the car is ordinary, necessary, and reasonable for their business. YouTube does count as a business, as long as the channel is being treated like a business.

Even services like Netflix and software can be deducted as long as you prove that it's needed to stay relevant in your industry. As a rule of thumb, don't try to fool the IRS. But, if you keep a written log that details that you do use hardware and software for work too, you claim the business percentage.

According to the IRS, if you used it exclusively and regularly for business then yes it is deductible. It would list it as under memberships/fees.

Gym and fitness expenses are typically considered as a personal expense, and therefore aren't tax deductible in most cases.

#Spotifydeleted and #ByeByeSpotify are trending days after the issue was highlighted by musician Neil Young, who gave Spotify the ultimatum of either removing his library of music, or Rogan's podcast. Spotify went with the former, and Young's discography is no longer available.

What happens if you stop paying Spotify?

Does canceling Spotify Premium stop the benefits immediately? After canceling your Premium, you can still enjoy your benefits until your next billing date. Once you've gone past your billing date, only then will you be downgraded to a Free plan.

Spotify: Artists Who Have Joined Neil Young in Removing Their Music. Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Failure and Nils Lofgren are among those who've left.

A new study has found that 19 per cent of Spotify users have cancelled their subscriptions since the controversy around Joe Rogan's podcast broke out.

Spotify Sees 1.5M Subscriber Cancelations Amid Russia War, Impact of Joe Rogan Controversy Minimal, CFO Indicates.

First, you can't cancel your Spotify subscription through any of the service's applications on iOS, Android, MacOS or Windows. Instead, you'll need to access your Spotify account through a web browser on your smartphone, tablet or computer.

Only $9.99/month after. Cancel anytime.

Terms and conditions apply. 1 month free not available for users who have already tried Premium.

We've received notice that an image and/or description on one of your playlists has been reported as including inappropriate or offensive content and violates our Profile and Playlist Image Guidelines. Therefore, we've removed the image and/or description from the playlist on Spotify.

If you cancel your subscription, you won't lose any of your saved content (playlists, Liked Songs, followed artists, followers, etc.). You'll only lose your downloads since this is a Premium feature. You can obtain more info about the differences between the free and the Premium service here.

If you decide to cancel your Spotify Premium subscription, it will change to a Free plan which provides you access to all your playlists, and saved music. However, when you delete your account, you will lose all your playlists!

Do you lose your downloaded music when you cancel Spotify Premium?

As we all know, Spotify is proprietary and restricts you from listening to downloaded Spotify Music offline after canceling Premium subscription. To keep all of your downloaded tracks or playlists playable after unsubscribing, you need to record Spotify music or Playlist in open music format first.

“By allowing the propagation of false and societally harmful assertions, Spotify is enabling its hosted media to damage public trust in scientific research and sow doubt in the credibility of data-driven guidance offered by medical professionals.” These medical professionals went on to urge Spotify to not cancel ...

Apple Music vs Spotify: Songs and Audio Content

There's no point paying for a service if it doesn't have the music you like. According to Spotify, it has "over 82 million tracks, including more than 4 million podcast titles." Meanwhile, Apple offers a more extensive catalog of 90 million songs for listening to.