If I do a schedule C, how do I deduct my notary public fees from self -employment tax

[Patrice]

Include the notary income with the other income for that business. When you're done with that business entries, enter notary public, se tax in the find (search) box. You will be given a chance to adjust your Self Employment tax. (see attached screenshots)

[Ad18]

You mentioned about deduction, I assume you paid someone to notarize for you, that is an expense item which you can put in the Legal and Professional line. By the way, most bank will do it fro free, why do you have to pay someone to notarize your documents?

[Dmserv]

I have a concern with this comment.  I do not have any other income other than my Notary Fees.  

[MQubed]

The screenshots don’t display ...

[Dmserv]

I don't know where the search box is to enter this info.  and there are no attached screenshots

[BillM223]

@MQubed

@Dmserv

You are both correct that there are no screenshots. When the answers from the old support forum were ported over to this new Community forum, no screenshots were carried forward (now screenshots that are added appear inline in the answer).

As for the Search box (button), it is in the upper right corner of the screen for both TurboTax Online and TurboTax CD/download for Windows. 

(this screen is of the Online product, but the Search feature is in the same approximate location for the Windows desktop software).

The same Search function is not present for the CD/download software for the Mac.

To find this on the Mac platform, go look for Topic List. See if you can find a Topic Search. Scrolls down the Topic Search list until you find notary public, se tax . 

Highlight this search term and click "go". Note that I doing these instructions from a platform other than Mac so you might not have the same experience, but the way to mimic a search on the Mac is to look through the Topic List.

This is from the Online product, but I believe that the Mac presentation will be approximately the same:

[Dmserv]

thank you for being so thorough

[BillM223]

You're welcome. Are you finding what you need to find on SE tax on notary public fees?

[Dmserv]

not yet.  I need to find out where and how to deduct those fees.   If I can do this through the software or I need to do this manually.  I did this manually last year on Schedule 4 of 1040, but would like to do it through the software now

[BillM223]

If indeed you are using the Mac software, then go find that Topic Search or Topic List. When you get to notary public, se tax highlight the phrase and click GO.

This will bring you to a screen that looks something like this:

Click on Make Adjustments, and continue until you come to a screen where you can remove the SE tax for notary public fees. Note that you have to have entered the notary fees first in Schedule C, in order for them to show here.

[Dmserv]

I got to that screen using my windows platform.  After I click on make adjustments I see the amount of my Net Notary Fees after all my schedule C expenses of approx $15000.   I assumed I would adjust that number to the amount of the fees I could deduct as a Notary of about 11K.  However after I changed that number to 11k the amount of money I owed jumped about $500.

?????

[BillM223]

On that screen "Enter Income Adjustments", you are to enter your net notary income. If 100% of the business' income is from doing notary stuff, then use the number that is probably pre-filled in (the net income from Schedule C).

If, however, you had income for that business for services other than notary services, then you will need to adjust the pre-filled in amount by the ratio of notary gross receipts for the business divided by the total gross receipts.

It is possible that on the first pass, TurboTax used the pre-filled in amount (100% of net income), where as it sounds like you reduced that from $15,000 to $11,000 because there was non-notary income in that Schedule C.

In this case, I would expect your tax to rise - because TurboTax went from using 100% of your Sch C income to 73% of your net income, if I understood your numbers correctly.

Does it appear to you that that is what happened?

[Dmserv]

Yes,  very possibly.  So I am still confused.  Can I do this in Turbo Tax? 

Also, for some reason, I was thinking that I should not owe any taxes because I am thinking that I did not get the chance to take out the Notary fees that all contributed to the 1099 income.

Thanks

[BillM223]

You said that your net income was $15,000 but that only $11,000 was for notary services. Did I understand that correctly?

If so, you would owe SE tax on the $4,000 difference. Why would you think that you would owe no taxes?

And you DID get to remove your notary income when you made the adjustment. The screen appeared with the $15,000 already filled in. TurboTax is thinking at this point that all of your Schedule C income is notary income. But, of course, that is not correct.

So when you changed the amount to $11,000, TurboTax recalculated the SE tax to exclude only the notary income. This would have increased your SE tax by some $600 ($4,000 times 15.7%).

When you made the adjustment, you were correcting a bad assumption by TurboTax, which you needed to do.