My wife did instructional design and curriculum design as part of her former job as a high school teacher, and she has a master's degree in education technology. After this past school year, she decided to leave classroom teaching to focus solely on instructional design. She was still employed by the school through the summer break and began a new instructional design job after that.
While she was still a full-time teacher, she completed an instructional design academy program and purchased an annual license to an instructional design software platform which she has used to do some consulting work on the side (as a sole proprietor). She wasn't reimbursed for either of these expenses. Are these deductible?
Based on what I see in TurboTax, on a screen called "Tell us about these expenses for your Instructional Designer work", the academy program seems to fall under "Education expenses you paid using cash, checks, credit cards, [etc.]". The next screen doesn't list software specifically, but "professional subscriptions" are on the list.
Sorry---W-2 employees cannot deduct job-related expenses on a federal return. Job-related expenses were eliminated as a federal deduction for W-2 employees by the tax laws that changed for 2018 and beyond. Your state tax laws might be different in AL, AR, CA, HI, MN, NY or PA.