Marketing is a key factor to starting and growing your business. The question is, how affordable is it really?
As a way of helping businesses generate and maintain customers, the government allows you to deduct marketing and advertising expenses. They are qualified as an ordinary, reasonable, and necessary tax deduction.
Some categories within this valuable tax deduction include special promotions, website expenses, marketing and advertising expenses, consultant or marketing agency retainers, social media expenses, technology expenses, and print advertising expenses.
What does this mean?
Before being able to deduct any taxes, business owners should look into the types of deductions allowed for marketing and advertising. The first step is to calculate exactly what your expenses are to begin with.
If you have website expenses, this could include:
- Designing and developing a site
- Fees for hosting
- Fees for maintenance
- Content creation
If you have general marketing and advertising expenses, this could include:
- Marketing strategy
- Content writing
- SEO services
- Email marketing
- Graphic Design
- Branding planning
- Paid Media Marketing
If you have social media expenses, this could include:
- Paying a marketing agency to run your social media
- Any content-creation expenses
- Subscriptions to social media sites
- Social media ad campaigns
- Influencer marketing
If you have technology expenses, this could include:
- Monthly or annual subscriptions for marketing software
- Any other social scheduling tools
If you have special promotions, this could include:
- Publicity campaigns
- A sponsor for a local event
- Hosting seminar, webinar, or a workshop promoting your business’s services
- Promotional items for clients, influencers, or staff that promotes your brand.
Anything else you should know?
Overall, advertising and marketing costs must be ordinary and necessary to be tax deductible, and all of the above are generally common and accepted in the industry. A necessary expense is one that is helpful and appropriate for the trade or business.
Other advertising expenses that are usually deductible are:
- Reasonable advertising directly related to business activities
- An expense for the cost of advertising to keep the business name before the public
- The cost of providing meals, entertainment, or recreational facilities to the public as a means of advertising or promoting in the community.
Advertise with Celebration Marketing and get your tax deduction for the upcoming year. With Celebration Marketing, we use the current available consumer demographic and income data to help identify your potential customers and create a target audience for your brand. Contact us to get started today!
