Tax Benefits of a Home-Based Business...
Can you Afford NOT to
Own Your Own Business?
You might be wondering if you have the time to start a business, or maybe you’re concerned about whether you can afford it. Well, I would suggest that you do have the time if you make it a priority, and that you can afford it, and really, you can’t afford NOT to!
Let’s say someone offered you a comparably safe investment stock that would immediately start paying you dividends so that by the end of the month, you could have earned back the investment and earn a significant income every month after that. If there were something that could generate immediate income such as that stock, could you afford NOT to buy it? Well, of course not! Well, there is no such stock, but I have something almost as excellent to show you.
Right now, if you’re like most folks, you’ve got a job and you’re an employee. Either way, you trade your precious, priceless, irreplaceable time for money and then you don’t get to take it all home because you have to pay taxes on it.
As an employee, you don’t have the benefits of all the tax deductions that business owners such as myself enjoy. Employees pay taxes on what they earn and get the leftovers to spend.
Business owners like me get all that they earn and then pay taxes on what’s leftover when they've spend some on business related things that you are probably already using, such as your car, space in your home, dining out… When these are truly business-related expenditures it lowers your taxable income.
To do this, you need to track your expenses related to seeking a profit. The government will let you deduct business expenses whether you make a profit or not as long as you truly try to. [By the way, my experience with my business has been that as long as I work my business, I can't help but make a profit.] And with my business, these expenses happen to be on things you are already using if you start using them for business. So even if you decide to build your business slowly, you are reducing your taxable income right away!
How’s this… You decide to take a trip to one of our awesome conferences. You can bring your family with you and make it a working vacation. Much if not all of your travel expenses are for a genuine business-building trip! Your kids get to swim and play at the hotel while your spouse relaxes in a Jacuzzi while you’re out at a few exciting meetings and then you get to come back and join in the fun while telling your family what an incredible day you had. All the while your taxable income is going down and therefore your take-home funds are going up and yet you and your loved ones are having a good time.
This is just an example, but I would encourage you to talk with a tax professional about all the incredible advantages associated with running your own home-based business, because I have barely skimmed the surface here.
~Amanda~
