Personal Tax Deduction - Professional Subscriptions

Oct 05, 2008 2 Replies

Before I retired, "Office In Home" was a legitimate deduction for me. Part of those deductions included "professional subscriptions" into which I threw the WSJ, local paper, and a number of business magazines. Now that the business mags are gone, the WSJ and local paper still flow to that category in my Quicken software and show up as a Schedule A Misc Itemized Deduction under "Employee Business Exp, Professional Subscriptions subject to the 2% limit. It isn't much of a factor but I'm a tad concerned it's showing up on a form labeled "Employee Business Expense" when I'm retired.



My justification for the deduction is I manage my own investments.



Q1) Still legit? Q2) If I've got this flowing to the wrong place... where should it go?


Since it is an investment activity that you engage in for profit as opposed to a business expense, the deduction is legitimate and is flowing to the right place in Schedule A, but you should change the classification to "Investment Exp, Professional Subscriptions" or whatever is similar in Quicken to keep it off the "Employee Business Expense" form.

I hope you know enough about the tax return, meaning what it should end up looking like, instead of relying on the flow from accounting software directly to the form. "Quicken put it there." isn't an excuse for a wrong entry to the return.

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