TWG...tax writeoff

[Spriggan]

ok, I'm probaly streaching this a bit but have you, Fell, ever look into wrtting things off that we buy to reveiw for TWG?  I just spent $30 on a DVD just so I can reveiw it for GRW .I have the VHS and rarely watch the series, so I probaly would have never bought the DVD if it wasn't for this.  So you think we have a case for getting a tax break?  I know TWG dosen't make money, no maybe we can get non-propht orginzation satatis.

[Sminja]

Interesting plea..but I don't think it'll ever happen

[fuzzyoctopus]

Well, no for you it won't happen.  Especially since you don't

1. work for the site or 2. file your own taxes.

But for Spriggan, it's probably a good idea, especially if he's got receipts from the past year.

[stacer]

Even if it's a little bit, you probably could claim it. However, you'll have to judge whether it's worth it to go through the extra paperwork. Since it's not something you make money on, you can't count it as self-employment, because you have to make a profit 3 out of 5 years. I've been dealing with this because of my freelance work. It's so complicated, and I have no idea how non-profits work, so I have no advice to offer. :-/

For $30, however, it's probably so minimal a difference that I doubt it'd be worth the paperwork to you. Now, if your expenditures went up into the mid-hundreds or thousands over the course of a year, that would make it worth it to check out.

[Spriggan]

Ya I realise that $30 isn't all that much.  But maybe if it was worth the paperwork I'd keep all my recepts for things like this.  As long as I do a reveiw for them then I could write them off.  We're talking $500 a year or so.

[stacer]

Then I'd say it's worth at least checking out, but unless TWG starts making money, or if you make money doing the same thing for something else, it won't work in a business writeoff sense. I don't think you'd get audited over it, but I was told when I filed a loss last year that I had to be sure to make a profit 3 out of 5 years, or it's just a hobby, and hobbies aren't deductible.

[EUOL]

There's some strange things in the tax law.  I'm not sure how the write-off would work--but you're only allowed to run a 'business' at a loss for so long before you lose your ability to get tax write-offs.

And also, for Sprig the deduction wouldn’t probably matter since you don't itemize.

[House of Mustard]

Yeah -- unless you're writing off at least about 7,000 dollars a year, it's better off not to itemize.

One nice thing, EUOL, is that I've been talking with a tax accountant, and authors can write all sorts of things off -- from computers to travel expenses...  If you have a certain part of your apartment that is dedicated to writing, you can even write of a portion of your rent.

[EUOL]

As I understood it, you can't actually deduct rent--you can only deduct a mortgage.  However, yes, itemizing for us is something completely different.  We can deduct things as expenses for our business, then still take the standard personal deduction of $4,500.

[stacer]

Yeah, that's the self-employment stuff I was talking about. I've been doing that for a couple years because of my freelancing for magazines and for Houghton.

[GorgonlaVacaTremendo]

Then I'd say it's worth at least checking out, but unless TWG starts making money,...

Why don't you guys sell advertisments?  I mean you have 148 members and I'm sure you have guests.  If you got even just $1 per hit you could be making a lot of money a year.  Plus you can get affiliated with other sites and bring in guests, on a trial basis, have a "forum rules" link on the main page so we don't get more newbie trash, and the site could easily make over $1000 dolars a year.  Then you could pay for some more domain names, bringing in more people and pulling in more money.  At this point you could easily convince some people to become affiliated with you because of you average daily hits bringing in more people.

At this point you wouldn't even have to deal with truces and you could just pay for your own advertisements to cause more hits to cause more profit...

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

And that goes back, Gorgon, to the "What would we do with the money?" statements of yonder over there.

[Mistress of Darkness]

Please, no pop-up ads, or banner ads.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

banners are not a problem except when the banner host is horribly horribly lagged. I pretty much ignore them otherwise

[Entsuropi]

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