Why Travel Bloggers Save The Most In Federal Income Taxes
Blogging for a living, and even blogging for profit, can yield great savings on your income taxes. Bloggers enjoy many of the tax benefits of home based businesses.
However, people who make travel blogs can enjoy a heap more by maximizing a few deductions.
Chances are if you have a travel blog, you travel alot! This is the number 1 deduction that you can maximize. Because you blog on travel, all of your travel becomes deductible.
This just isn’t your plane fare and hotels. This is a whole bunch of fun deductions. (PS to get all of the travel deductions, get the book!)
On a recent trip to Cairnes, Australia, I racked up well over $4,000 in Federal Income Tax deductions. To the average self employed blogger, this translates to about $1,200 in real cash. Not a bad rebate for just one trip.
You can include all of your sightseeing trip expenses as well. We went on the Sky Rail and the Kuranda scenic railway just to name a few. These become deductible as you get to review them on your blog.
I also do Youtube videos of all of the trips so anything having to do with filming and editing is deductible.
To sure up your travel business, I would recommend being a regular reviewer on Trip Advisor. Even though you do not get paid, it shows that you are in the travel business. If anybody can tell me how they can pay reviewers, let me know!
Also, you must follow three basic rules in order to have your travel blogging business seen as a “business” in the eyes of the IRS. In summary, they are:
1.) Intent to make a profit
2.) Have sufficient activity (consistent and persistent)
3.) Keep good records
Each of these is detailed in the Blogging Federal Income Tax Manual.
In addition, one of the coolest deductions (if deductions were cool) is paying your children that are between 7-17 years old to work in your business. Because they are usually on vacation when you are, they can do all kind of work for you in your blogging business. My boys take pictures and videos for me as I can not always see everything! They also serve as models for me in different scenes!
Once loaded up to youtube and blogs, I can have both boys watch the videos and give likes. Also, they work for me on sites like like4like where you can watch videos or like things to get credits. These credits can be used to get likes, shares, etc for your own work.
If done correctly, you can get a deduction anywhere from $12,000 on up, depending on how many qualifying children you have. With just one, your maximum cash in your pocket can be about $3,600.
I’ve outlined just two classes of tax deductions you can maximize. Just these two can put about $4,800 back into your pocket in real cash. Of course, each tax situation is different and you should consult your tax advisor regarding your unique position.
With that said, I have been doing this for over 40 years and have thousands of clients enjoying the reduction in their federal income taxes. Based on that, I can tell you that when you are in the travel niche, you do very well for your taxes!
Blogging can be very lucrative for sure and the tax benefits are the icing on the cake.
If you want to get the most Federal Income Tax benefits from your blogging business, just CLICK HERE to get access to my course on Federal Income Taxes for Bloggers.
Cheers
Steve
Disclaimer – This is not intended to be legal advice.
It seems that those who run a travel blog are Abel to save so much money lately because of the possibility of the not having to pay heavy taxes. I have been contemplating it but now that I have seen this, I am sure that I will definitely take a swipe at it. Glad to learn this you shared. Cheers!
Hi dear
I think this post is very informative. With this pandemic the travel industry was the first business to go down, I remember one of my affiliate company sending me an email to inform me that they closed the program indefinitely back in April. So, I need all the help that I can get to continue enjoying my business.
Now, if I do not have a precise record and I am trying to save the most in income tax, how far back should my record be? Because I have all my data to help me establish my records.
Thanks
Hi,
I am so glad that I stumbled on this blog because I wish to start a travel blog with cool places to visit in my country. It’s still in the planning phase however.
I like that you provided things that i hadn’t thought about in terms of deductibles. The editing expenses and so forth I would not have thought of adding those as deductibles. This part about paying my children is something i didn’t know I could include at all. I really thought i’d take my children along but didn’t see that they could be a part of my staff and therefore give me more areas to deduct on my tax. I like this. This is a wealth of knowledge here.
Much thanks,
Candy Benn
Wow! I cannot believe that I do not know about this before now. Honestly, I feel a little sad considering that I lackdknowledhe on this and I have been literally doing the travelling around for my blog a lot. Now, definitely changing the game and sticking to tips Herr. Would definitely get the book too to read so I can maximize on my tax deduction. Thanks
It’s really nice of you to share to share this article, blogging is truly one for the most lucrative online business that anyone can do and it’s been rising in popularity for a long time. I’d love to save in my federal income tax, it’ll help make more money and still work fine. Thanks for this information, it’s really resourceful.