Tax advise for self employed income

[Wisedoc88]

I'm currently working as a employee of a large hospital but also taking side jobs as a moonlighter, Am I allow to use my self employed income to pay for expenses like CME, journal suscription which are only partially reimbursed by the hospital?, just to explain, I have a cap of only 3 K for CME and 500 allowance for profesional expenses, which is very small and any higher CME expenditure for a trip which sometimes run into 10 K a year comes from my own pocket

Thanks in advance

N

[jfoxcpacfp]

It depends upon the amount of moonlighting income. Some might recommend to go ahead and deduct all of the difference on your schedule C, but I would personally take more of a pro-rata approach. Yes, some should be allocated to your schedule C - how much depends on facts and circumstances. You would be better off to negotiate a somewhat smaller salary in exchange for more expense reimbursement - possible?

of course, if you are moonlighting as a bartender, you can't deduct any of it.

[Wisedoc88]

I was thinking about moonlighting extra just to get profesionals expenses deducted, for example the hospital will reimburse me for the 3K CME and my moonlighting pay for any additional expenses incurred with CME, profesional societies or even a work related equipments (laptop, sthesthoscope) i was hoping this was possible.

[jfoxcpacfp]

Wisedoc88 wrote:

I was thinking about moonlighting extra just to get profesionals expenses deducted, for example the hospital will reimburse me for the 3K CME and my moonlighting pay for any additional expenses incurred with CME, profesional societies or even a work related equipments (laptop, sthesthoscope) i was hoping this was possible.

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A business expense has to be "ordinary and necessary" to qualify as a deduction. As I said originally, you could probably deduct some but it depends on specific facts and circumstances. I can't see writing off $5,000 of expenses on $5,000 of moonlighting income, for example. You should talk this over with your CPA, though.