From 2017-2019, I worked occasionally on a web app intended one day to become a business. During that time I paid several software developers small sums of money (< $5k total) to help out with the project.
I "opened" the business in 2019, presumably, though that seems like a gray area. The site was live for a while, but I didn't market it so there were very few (< 10) users and no revenue. (There was no method for payment at all built into the site at that time; all accounts were free. I had some ideas for eventually generating revenue but also considered running it as a not-for-profit service.) Hard to say if that constituted "opening" the business or if that was just another phase of development/test. I essentially abandoned the project in 2019; the website stayed up into 2020 but I did not incur any more costs.
I understand that the first $5000 in startup costs can be deducted like ordinary business expenses in the same year as the business is opened. What should I do with these startup costs incurred over multiple years before I "officially" launched in 2019 (if I ever did at all)? (Some of those returns have already been filed; I just want to understand what I should have done here.)
