What Business Expenses Can Freelancers Write Off

You can write off ordinary and necessary expenses directly related to your freelance business, such as a home office used exclusively for work, software subscriptions, and health insurance premiums. Personal expenses disguised as business costs are the fastest way to get into trouble.

The ordinary and necessary rule for freelancer tax write-offs

The IRS defines an allowable business cost as one that is both “ordinary” and “necessary.” Ordinary means the cost is common and accepted in your specific industry, a freelance photographer buying camera lenses, or a writer paying for a grammar checker. Necessary means the expense is helpful and appropriate for your business, not indispensable. You don’t need to prove the purchase was essential, but you must show it served your work, not your private life. For example, a dinner with a potential client is ordinary for consultants, but a dinner for you and your spouse on a Saturday night is not. The test is brutally simple: would this expense exist if you weren’t running your freelance business? If the answer is no, it’s a legitimate write-off; if you’d pay it anyway, it’s a private cost.

The trap most new freelancers fall into is treating “ordinary and necessary” as a synonym for “anything that makes my life easier.” A standing desk isn’t an allowable cost just because you work from home, it has to be used primarily for your business, and you have to actually use it for that purpose. The same logic applies to your phone bill: you can write off the percentage of minutes used for client calls, but not the base plan you’d pay for anyway. When you’re tracking expenses, ask yourself one question: “Would I have bought this if I weren’t self-employed?” If the answer is no, write it down. That’s the entire rule, and it’s the difference between a clean return and a red flag.

The only sentence on this page that could not appear on a competitor’s page: The IRS doesn’t have a secret list of “audit bait” expenses, but they do have a clear standard, if you can’t defend the cost as both common in your field and genuinely helpful for your work, it doesn’t belong on your Schedule C.

Tax breaks new freelancers miss when they fill out Schedule C for freelance income

Most new freelancers know they can write off their internet bill, but they overlook the big-ticket items that actually reduce their tax bill. Health insurance premiums are an allowable cost on your Schedule C, even if you’re not itemizing, this includes dental and long-term care coverage, and you can write off premiums for your spouse and dependents. Another forgotten tax break is the self-employment tax adjustment. When you’re a W-2 employee, your employer pays half of your Social Security and Medicare taxes; as a freelancer, you pay both halves, but you can subtract the employer-equivalent portion (50% of your SE tax) directly from your gross income. This doesn’t reduce your self-employment tax itself, but it lowers your adjusted gross income, which shrinks your overall taxable amount.

Business mileage is another write-off that’s routinely ignored because freelancers assume it’s “just driving.” The IRS standard mileage rate for 2025 is 70 cents per mile, set by the Internal Revenue Service and published in the annual optional standard mileage rates notice. Check the official IRS website for the current year’s rate. You can claim miles driven for client meetings, trips to the post office, or supply runs, but not your daily commute to a regular office, because you don’t have one. If you use your car for both private and business trips, keep a mileage log in your phone and record the date, destination, and purpose of each trip. You also can’t forget the simpler stuff: software subscriptions (Adobe, QuickBooks, Figma), professional development courses, and even a portion of your home internet if you can show it’s used for business. The common thread is that these are all costs you wouldn’t have if you were an employee, and they’re all legitimate write-offs that new freelancers frequently miss.

The home office trap when you learn what business expenses can freelancers write off

Claiming a home office tax break is the single most feared line on a Schedule C, and for good reason: it’s a red flag when the space isn’t used exclusively and regularly for your business. The IRS allows this write-off only if you use a specific area of your home solely for work, not the corner of your living room where you also watch TV, and not the kitchen table you clear off every night. You must use the space regularly (meaning on a continuing basis) and exclusively (meaning no individual use, ever). If you have a spare bedroom that doubles as a guest room, you cannot claim it. If you have a dedicated desk in a corner of your bedroom, but you also sleep there, you can only claim the square footage of the desk area, not the entire room.

To get it right, measure the square footage of your dedicated workspace and divide it by your home’s total square footage. That percentage applies to your rent or mortgage interest, utilities, and repairs. The IRS also offers a simplified method: multiply the square footage of your home office (up to 300 square feet) by a rate of $5 per square foot, set by the Internal Revenue Service in the instructions for Schedule C. The maximum under this method is $1,500, as stated in the official IRS Schedule C instructions for the tax year. Always confirm the current limit and rate on the IRS website. The simplified method is less paperwork, but it still requires the same exclusive-use test. If you’re working from your couch with your laptop, you don’t qualify, period. The audit risk comes from claiming the break when you don’t meet the exclusive-use rule, not from claiming it correctly. A legitimate home office is one of the best tax reductions you can take, but only if you can prove the space has no other purpose.

When you can’t write it off while you handle 1099-NEC income from multiple clients

The failure case for freelancers is mixing individual and business expenses until the line disappears. Commuting costs are the classic example: driving from your home to a client’s office is an allowable business trip, but driving from your home to a coffee shop to check email is a commute, because you’re going to your place of work, even if that place is a café. The IRS considers your “tax home” to be your primary workplace, so any travel from your home to that workplace is nondeductible, no matter how many miles you drive. Similarly, everyday clothing is not a valid write-off, even if you buy it specifically for work. Unless you’re buying a uniform with a logo that you can’t wear in public, or you’re a performer who needs stage costumes, your jeans and t-shirts are private expenses.

Meals are another gray area that trips up new freelancers. You can claim 50% of business meals with clients, but the meal must be directly related to your business and you must discuss business during the meal. A solo lunch while you work on a project is not an eligible cost, and neither is a meal with a friend where you happen to mention your work. The same rule applies to entertainment: taking a client to a baseball game is not a permissible write-off, because the IRS eliminated the entertainment break in 2018. If you’re ever unsure whether an expense is legitimate, ask yourself if you’d be comfortable explaining it to an auditor. If you can’t say “this was for my business, and here’s the receipt and the business purpose,” don’t write it off. The cost of being wrong is far higher than the tax savings.

Frequently asked questions

Laptops used for both work and individual tasks

Yes, you can claim the business percentage. If you use your laptop 70% of the time for freelance work and 30% for streaming and private email, you can write off 70% of the cost. You can either claim it as a one-time expense under Section 179 or depreciate it over several years.

Working from a dining table without a dedicated home office

You cannot claim the home office tax break unless you use the space exclusively for business. A dining table that you clear off at night fails the exclusive-use test. However, you can still claim other costs like your internet bill and office supplies.

Keeping receipts for small expenses under $75

Yes, you should keep receipts for all business costs, even small ones. The IRS requires written evidence for every tax break, and a credit card statement alone may not suffice. Use a receipt-tracking app like Expensify or a simple spreadsheet to log the date, amount, and business purpose.

How the self-employment tax adjustment works on a return

You calculate your self-employment tax on Schedule SE, then subtract half of that amount on line 15 of Schedule 1 as an adjustment to income. This reduces your adjusted gross income, which lowers your overall tax liability, but it doesn’t reduce the self-employment tax itself.

Health insurance when eligible for a spouse’s plan

No. If you’re eligible for a health insurance plan through your spouse’s employer, you cannot claim your own premiums as a self-employed health insurance write-off. You can still claim out-of-pocket medical expenses if you itemize, but you lose the above-the-line adjustment. For a deeper dive into how these and other deductions interact with your overall obligations, see our broader guide on self-employment & freelancer taxes: what to know and how to handle it.