Business writing off training and education expenses.

[teeternorth]

Hello there, my wife has a business and we are joint filing.  In 2020 she have business training costs, but no income in 2020.  We are trying to deduct those, but when inputted into the turbo tax, it will only deduct a small percentage of those expenses.  She had about 6k in business training costs.  I was under the impression that we could deduct all of the business costs.  I looked through the posts and could not find a similar one.  Thanks so much for your help.

Teeternorth

[JeffreyR77]

Please clarify what type of business entity does your wife have?  How did she try to deduct them?

You are correct, ordinary and necessary business training expenses are deductible in most cases.

[teeternorth]

Hi there, thanks for the quick reply.  My wife's business is an LLC.  I am not sure how to deduct them through the Turbo Tax software.  I went through steps that the and the software asked if we had assets to deduct, which I tried, but that did not really fit.  So I added them as a misc.  Which added them okay, but still did not appear to deduct the entire amount.  I also tried adjusting her business to a qualifed and a non qualified business but that did not seem to affect the amount either.  Thanks!

[JeffreyR77]

Verify you have indicated your wife materially participates in this business.  The expenses shouldn't be in the asset area.  They are fully deductible ordinary business expenses under other miscellaneous expenses.

 

[teeternorth]

Hi there, thanks so much for your help and responses.  I rechecked the input and corrected it to include she was materially participating and that fixed it.  Thanks again for all of your help.