When reporting expenses for multiple (3) businesses, do I enter self-employed health insurance premiums in just one of them or split among the 3 businesses?

[artechimaging]

My wife and I have three businesses (I have 2, she has one) and we file a schedule C for each. I didn't think it appropriate to enter the full self employed health insurance premiums in each, so am wondering the right way to enter it.  We don't pay separate premiums -- just one for us both.  I guess I can enter the premiums in one of the businesses, but not the other two???

[PeterM · Accepted solution]

The effect will be the same...the deduction ends up on Line 29 of the 1040 (as you already know). I would split the premiums three ways and put the expense on the three different businesses. This way, the total shows up on Line 29 of the 1040, and all the businesses are showing an expense for the health insurance payments.

Unless of course you can trace the premiums payments to one business in particular, which is completely acceptable also.

[mwarney]

There is actually a worksheet to determine how much of this deduction gets attributed to each schedule C.  See Publication 535 chapter 6.  It basically does what you say and pro-rates based on income taking into account the SE tax.

[xela]

TurboTax (Home and Business edition) wizard language is misleading... I also have three 1099-MISC. For each of them, Insurance Payments section reads: "Enter the TOTAL AMOUNT of health insurance premiums you paid for yourself...." (TOTAL AMOUNT is in bold font). This implies that TurboTax would figured out on its own what portion of that TOTAL to attribute to each 1099-MISC. Not so... It just tripple my total premiums on line 29 of my 1040.