Claiming Your Employee Business Expenses

If you are an employee with unreimbursed work-related expenses, you may be able to deduct them as an itemized deduction on Schedule A. You can deduct all unreimbursed employee business expenses incurred in the normal course of carrying out your responsibilities as an employee. Note that employee business expenses are subject to the 2% of AGI limitation, meaning that they must exceed 2% of your adjusted gross income before you can claim the deduction

You can deduct only unreimbursed employee business expenses that are:

• Paid or incurred during your tax year.
• Incurred for carrying on your trade or business as an employee.
• Ordinary and necessary.

An expense is ordinary if it is common and accepted in your trade, business, or profession. An expense is necessary if it is appropriate and helpful to your business.

The following expenses can be claimed as employee business expenses, as long as all the laid down conditions are met.

• Travel expenses
• Meal and entertainment expenses
• Business gift expenses
• Local transportation expenses
• Car expenses
• Home office expenses

We will expound in detail on each category of employee business expense, in subsequent articles.

The primary objective of this article is to empower taxpayers to learn to do their own taxes. For detailed information on how to deduct your employee business expenses, grab yourself a copy of “Doing Your Own Taxes is as Easy as 1, 2, 3” on TaxConnections.com.

Milton G Boothe is an IRS Enrolled Agent with over twenty years of tax and financial accounting experience, including several years at PricewaterhouseCoopers. He is also a British certified Chartered Accountant. He is currently employed in private tax practices where he helps people resolve their tax problems, minimize their taxes, and routinely represents the interests of taxpayers before the Internal Revenue Service. As an Enrolled Agent (EA) Boothe is a federally-authorized tax practitioner who has technical expertise in the field of taxation and who is empowered by the U.S. Department of the Treasury to represent taxpayers before all administrative levels of the IRS for audits, collections, and appeals.
Milton G Boothe is also the author of several tax publications, wherein he encourages people to empower themselves by learning to do their own taxes.

Subscribe to TaxConnections Blog

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.