Tracking Cell Phone Usage For Tax Write Offs

allcelldeals

allcelldeals

Pittsburgh Pimpin'
Oct 14, 2008
368
3
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From what I understand the IRS wants you to track all of your calls if you plan to write off a cell phone for you business, even if you don't take personal calls on the line. If you take even a couple of calls and do not take that percentage into account when writing off your bill they can nail you. What are you guys using to do this? I know everyone isn't going through their phone bill line by line and marking everything off, but if your not careful and get audited they will want you to produce records.

By the way this is a shitty rule.
 


It's a rule that's around because so many small business owners try to expense there entire life and the IRS got sick of it.

If you have a separate personal line you don't expense that's pretty much good enough for them. If you only have one phone line and you expense 100% of it that's a nice easy reg flag for the IRS to look into what you doing and start the raping.
 
miketpowell said:
It's a rule that's around because so many small business owners try to expense there entire life and the IRS got sick of it.

If you have a separate personal line you don't expense that's pretty much good enough for them. If you only have one phone line and you expense 100% of it that's a nice easy reg flag for the IRS to look into what you doing and start the raping.
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I don't think its a red flag if you just have one phone line -- how are they going to even know how many phone lines you have, and whether they are paid for by you as an individual or as a business?
 
allcelldeals said:
From what I understand the IRS wants you to track all of your calls if you plan to write off a cell phone for you business, even if you don't take personal calls on the line. If you take even a couple of calls and do not take that percentage into account when writing off your bill they can nail you. What are you guys using to do this? I know everyone isn't going through their phone bill line by line and marking everything off, but if your not careful and get audited they will want you to produce records.

By the way this is a shitty rule.
Click to expand...

Either A - Get a business line or B - deduct whatever is reasonable and what you can PROVE if audited.

I personally use Skype for business and my phone is $30 unlimited data for stats and emails on the go... So I deduct Skype + $30 for phone per month.

I am not about to get raped if I get audited, so I don't play that 50% but it really only accounted for 15%. You have to remember guys, you have to PROVE everything is true when audited.
 
I'm pretty sure I've seen a blackberry app that does something along the lines of give you a button at the end of a call to indicate it was a business call. Then it displays a tally when you need it of what % was biz. Going to try to find it because I'm now in the same boat.
 
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