The Consumerist: "It's hard to get a break when you're out of work, but there are a few tax breaks you do qualify for. Did you know that you can deduct travel expenses for job interviews?
Monday, January 31, 2011
Deduct The Costs Of Your Job Search
The Consumerist: "It's hard to get a break when you're out of work, but there are a few tax breaks you do qualify for. Did you know that you can deduct travel expenses for job interviews?
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6 comments:
This is actually very interesting. I never would have imagined that you could deduct such things. I'm sure there is a whole lot of things that we could be deducting and saving money on, but hardly any one is aware of. In fact, I for one am very uneducated about tax information, as many people my age. It is a very important thing to learn, that most people know the basics of, but unfortunately the more complicated parts get overlooked a lot, which costs us more money than it needs to.
I thought all of the comments were more interesting than the brief snippet itself. People debating what can be deducted and the benefits of itemizing... It was interesting to consider those deductions, though. My boyfriend's aunt works as an interior designer, and when she buys a new bag, she lists it as a business expense and deducts it from taxes because she uses it in her daily work life. In some ways, things like that and deducting the cost of gas to an interview seem like cheating, but I guess people need to find breaks where they can...
I hate to admit it but I don't know the first thing about taxes and deductions and everything that goes along with that... But considering how much a person can easily spend on searching for a job, it is good to know that things like this are deductible. I'm not sure if a resource like this exists or not, but some sort of "taxes for theatre dummies" might be a good use of someone's time to write and a good use of (tax deductible) monies to purchase and use when figuring out taxes. It might make all of that nonsense a little less scary for folks like me.
There are so many things we can deduct in our industry. This one I did not know about but I will add it to the list of my deductions. Showcase, deduction. USITT, deduction. I like this. But is the blanket statement: Anything we do for work that comes out of our pocket is a deduction, a true one. I think that might take it too far. I am sure there is a website somewhere that can explain this to us. I will do some hunting...
This seems applicable in our industry, what with the possibility of traveling all the time. Depending on how many shows someone is working on this could save them a lot of money. Any way we can save money is great, though I hope that this won't get abused.
I wish I knew this previously, as I'm scrounging around for extra cash right now. It makes sense though why most people would be unaware of it. Our government has so many poorly publicized policies. For example, I doubt everyone will be familiar with the fine details of the new ObamaCare plan, even though they should be.
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