Do I enter my business expenses as negative numbers or positive numbers?

[Coleen3 · Accepted solution]

Enter them as a positive number. The program will subtract them from the income.

[pmhillhouse]

OK, it just made me wonder because my refund went from a refund to me owing just by me entering my expenses. thanks

[jyeh001]

Did you understand this? I saw the same thing. Why would the taxes go up after entering another expense?

[Matt30n]

Same thing happened to me: started return from business using the wizard, while adding income the refund grew bigger, then for each expense I put, the refund shrunk.  Happened last year as well.  I am just perplexed as to why.  I read elsewhere that it may be due to EIC calculations in the background; still, AFAIK, the less you earn the higher the refund so that would not intuitively explain why expenses reduce it.  Has anyone figured this out?  Perhaps somebody from TurboTax can help clarifying? 

[VolvoGirl]

By increasing your deductions and expenses it will decease your income and you may not be getting as many credits as before like the EIC credit. You can't go by the refund monitor until you have entered everything in. Also after you reduce your income to zero there is no more refund to get back. But even though your taxable income goes down and you owe less income tax on it, you still owe SE Self Employment tax if you have a Net Profit.

And what you said about ....the less you earn the higher the refund  is not true.  It depends on many things main how much withholding or estimated payments you had.