Today TaxMama® hears from Excel in the TaxQuips Forum with an interesting question. He asks how to write off his travel. You can read my answer to him in the TaxQuips Forum. But what I’d like to do today is to provide more general tips about how be a legitimate travel writer – for tax purposes.
Dear Family,
This is a time of year when we do a lot of traveling. Whether to see family, or to take much-needed vacations. Some people, feeling the wanderlust, start yearning to take more trips – and to have the IRS pick up the tab. How can you go about this?
1) Learn how get paid for writing travel articles – and how much you’re apt to earn.
- Consider taking a class on how to write travel articles.
- Another class on how to write, period.
- And another course or book on how to sell your articles – the Writers Market book is essential.
- Or – do a lot of reading on the topics
2) Learn how to set up your own travel website to either support your published articles, or to generate income from the site itself. This could generate even more revenue than selling your articles. (See my discussion with Excel)
3) Set up a travel and business budget so your overall costs are always less than your revenues. By always showing a profit, you’re less subject to the very restrictive IRS hobby loss rules. (See my ItsAWAHMThing blog.)
4) Build up your travel gradually. But write consistently. Do this sensibly, and in a few years, you may just find yourself making a full-time living at it, like Rick Steves or Huell Howser.
Naturally, once you’ve established yourself, you can start arranging for sponsors to help underwrite your trips by writing for them, or reviewing their products and services along the way.
And remember, you can find answers to all kinds of questions about turning dreams into businesses and other tax and business issues, free. Where? Where else? At www.TaxMama.com.
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