(UPDATE: The giveaway is now closed. We have our winner! See the comments for more info.)
My daughter got a smartphone for her birthday. The new addition brings us to a total of four phones in the house – not counting the separate landlines at our office.
It’s actually not uncommon these days for folks to have multiple phones. Many households have a landline or two plus cell phones for personal and for business use. That can make figuring out deductibility tricky come tax time.
Here are a few tips to help sort it all out:
- Phones which are solely for personal use are never deductible.
- The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) considers your primary landline always personal, even if you don’t. That means that it’s not deductible because see #1.
- A second phone or fax line in your phone may be deductible if you use it for business.
- If you mix business and personal use of a cell or landline (but not your primary landline), you must divide the total cost between the two based on your usage. You can only deduct as a business expense the piece attributable to business, so if you use your phone 75% for business, then you can deduct 75% of the cost.
- As much as it feels like work, the IRS doesn’t consider being a student the same as being employed: thus, the use of a phone at school by a student is never deductible.
If you anticipate claiming the use of your phone as a business expense, you’ll need to be able to substantiate the use. Keep excellent records – annotating your bills might be helpful if you use your phones for personal and business use.
And that brings us to our next giveaway. One reader will win a Republic Wireless Moto G smartphone with three months of complimentary WiFi and 3G cellular service (the folks at Republic advise that the winner will have to pay nominal taxes though – usually depending on your state).
Republic is a very different kind of carrier – they eliminate all the things that drive people nutty about the big carriers such as contracts, counting minutes, texts, and how much data you use. The company offers 4 simple plans that are easy to understand and you don’t have to worry about what might be buried in the fine print.
Republic is a great fit for teachers and students – 99% of college campuses are WiFi enabled as are many secondary schools. Thus the company says many families put their kids on the $10 plan which offers unlimited WiFi calling, text and data as well as unlimited cellular talk and text.
To enter to win, just post a comment below telling me how many phone numbers (including fax, VOIP and the like) you have at work and home. I’ll go first: Eight.
Entries must be posted in the comments section for this blog post in the space below by 10:00 p.m. EST on September 20, 2014. It’s just that easy. I’ll choose the winner randomly (using a number generator) out of all of the qualifying entries.
Be sure and read the fine print for more rules because, as you know, I’m a lawyer and I like rules:
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Don’t panic if your comment doesn’t show immediately. If it goes to moderation because, for example, you’re new here, the time stamp on your comment is what counts.
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I love my Twitter followers and my Facebook fans but for this particular giveaway, tweets and Facebook comments will not be counted. Ditto for emails. You must leave your comment on the blog at this post.
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You can enter as many times as you like but you must leave a different answer each time you comment.
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Offensive comments or comments that otherwise violate the comment policy will be deleted and will not be considered valid for purposes of the contest.
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Similarly, pingbacks and other links will be disregarded for purposes of the contest.
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I will need your full name and your email address: be sure to use your real information when you register to leave a comment. I won’t publish your email address but I do need contact information for the winning entry. If you win and I can’t reach you, it’s a forfeit.
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Due to shipping considerations, you must have a valid United States address. Sorry, Canada, eh?
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I respect your privacy and I will not send you anything unrelated to your entry in this contest. By entering the contest, you agree that I may post any part or all of your submission including your name as a part of the contest announcements or promotions, with the exception of your email address.
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Like Judge Judy, my determination is final.
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Prizes are provided directly by our sponsors and are not exchangeable or redeemable for other prizes. Sponsors do not pay for placement and do not receive any compensation for contributions – neither do I! I have no affiliation, paid or otherwise, with any of our sponsors.
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If you aren’t allowed to participate in giveaways because of the laws in your state or your age or an agreement you’ve made with your mother, consider this giveaway not applicable to you. In other words: void where prohibited or restricted.
