Profit and loss
Put in what the business takes and what it spends — by the week, by the month or by the year, whichever way you actually know it. You get a proper profit and loss you can print or take into Excel, and the profit carries straight over to what you will owe on it.
The list is the useful part. Every line is a line the IRS already asks about, in Schedule C’s own order and with its line numbers, because the money people lose is almost never on the lines they remember.
What came in
Everything the business took, before any expense comes off it.
What you invoiced or were paid for the work. Include the jobs paid in cash — the 1099s you receive will not add up to it and the difference is what gets asked about.
Interest on business accounts, rebates, recovered bad debts, scrap sales.
Cost of what you sell
Only if you sell goods or build things. A service business leaves this empty and loses nothing.
Running the business
Ads, signs, printing, the website, anything you pay to be found.
Business miles at the standard rate, or the business share of the real costs. Not commuting from home to one regular place of work.
Referral fees, sales commissions, broker fees.
Anyone you paid $600 or more needs a 1099-NEC, and the deduction can be challenged if it was never filed.
From your depreciation schedule. If you bought equipment or a vehicle this year, that figure belongs here, not in supplies.
Health cover and benefits for staff. Your own health insurance is not here — it comes off on the front of the 1040 instead.
Liability, professional indemnity, commercial property. Not health, and not the car if you already counted it above.
Business loans, equipment finance, the business share of a credit card. Mortgage interest on business property goes a line above.
Your accountant, your lawyer, the bookkeeper. The fee for preparing the business part of your return is deductible here.
Stationery, postage, small equipment, software and subscriptions you use to run the business.
Your own retirement contribution is not here — it comes off on the 1040. The button below works out how much it could be.
A shop, a yard, an office you rent outright. Renting part of your own home is further down.
Keeping things working. Making something better or longer-lived is an improvement and gets depreciated instead.
Payroll taxes you paid as an employer, business licences, permits, commercial rent tax. Not your own income tax.
Flights, hotels, car hire on business trips away overnight. Meals on those trips go on the next line, not this one.
Put in what you actually spent — half of it is deductible and the tool takes the half off for you.
Gross payroll. Not money you drew for yourself — an owner's draw is not a deduction.
The ones people forget
All of these land on line 27a as other expenses. They are listed separately here because they are the ones left off, and together they are rarely small.
Monthly charges, and the percentage the card processor keeps.
The business share. A single family phone is not wholly a business phone.
Accounting, design, storage, the trade journals.
Trade bodies, professional licences, chambers of commerce.
Keeping up a skill you already use. Qualifying for a new trade is not deductible.
Only clothing you could not wear ordinarily. A suit is not deductible however much you dislike it.
Working from home
Put in the whole household cost and set the business share once. Only that share comes off, and only for space used regularly and only for the business.
Usually the floor area of the room over the floor area of the house. One room out of five is 20%. It has to be a space used regularly and only for the business — the kitchen table does not qualify, however much work happens there.
If you own. The rest of it still goes on Schedule A if you itemize.
An estimate and a worksheet, not a tax return and not bookkeeping. Meals are taken at 50% under section 274(n). The home office share is the actual-expense method; the simplified method of $5 a square foot up to 300 square feet may come out higher for a small room and is not computed here. Depreciation, inventory and the question of whether a particular expense is ordinary and necessary are all left to you. Retirement figures are 2026 limits from IRS Notice 2025-67. Your figures stay in your own browser — nothing on this page is sent to us.