kfenwick
Expert Alumni

Self employed

To clarify for @bkaytaxes , a blanket statement that all your expense are deductible even if you have no income is not accurate. 

You indicated you had "no income".  We would need to clarify if that meant you haven't earned or collected any income, versus being open for business but zero sales to date.

There may be some costs that can be deducted even if the business is not technically open for business.  And some costs may have to be deducted when your business is actually up and running.   

There are also options for calculating your depreciation.  The depreciation provisions can allow you to write off all or part of the cost of certain assets entirely in the same year.  These direct write-off provisions can change from one year to the next.

Lastly there are some assets that cannot be depreciated or expensed under any circumstance (i.e. Land).

 

As to your filing requirement, again, if you have obtained a federal EIN, the IRS will be looking for the tax returns for that EIN.  That is why sometimes you file a zero return with no activity and merely to satisfy the IRS rules for reporting your taxes.

If you have other income or businesses it is NEVER correct to report expense from one business as deduction against another business.  Each business entity should be filed separately reporting ONLY the items of income and expense for that entity.  This is necessary because the businesses may be taxed at different rates, some are subject to Self Employment tax, some may even have losses that can only be deducted or that are partially suspended.

If you have other income from a job or other sources your would file that income as usual