blogging – Fervent Foodie

Please note: the 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act changed the treatment of hobby expenses.

For many of us food bloggers, blogging is a way of LIVING THE DREAM (AKA making money by doing something we really enjoy). While making money is wonderful, from a tax perspective, the lower your net income (that is, income earned less eligible expenses) the less tax you have to pay come April 15th. My first Taxes for Food Bloggers post discussed the important issue of determining whether your blogging activities are business or hobby related. Once you make that key determination, the next step is to identify any expenses you’re able to deduct to offset your blogging income. Note that starting in 2018, hobby expenses are no longer deductible. This means the below expenses are only deductible if your food blog is classified as a business.

Tax Deductions for Food Bloggers

Good news, friends.

There are LOTS of eligible expenses you can claim on your tax return, and moreover, plenty of tools to help you with your taxes to boot! But before you can deduct an expense, you must determine whether the expense was incurred solely for blog purposes, solely for personal purposes, or a mixture of both. Generally speaking, expenses related to personal usage (i.e., not blog related) are not tax deductible. (Insert collective “dangit” here.) Mixed-used expenses must be allocated between the portion related to personal use and blogging use.

For example: HOME INTERNET EXPENSE. Let’s say you spend $50 a month for internet. If your blog is the sole purpose for having internet access at your home, the whole amount ($50 * 12 months = $600) is deductible. Granted, most of us access the internet for more than just blogging, and thus, home internet is a mixed-use expense. Bloggers must determine the proportion of their total internet usage time that relates to blogging usage versus personal usage. So, if a blogger determines his or her home internet usage to be 60% blog related, then 60% of the expense is deductible (60% * $600 = $360), while the remaining 40% ($240) is a nondeductible personal expense. Make sense?

I’m a projects person—I love (and crave) having something to pour my energy into, especially if that something involves learning sweet new skills. Since May 2010 my biggest project (and biggest obsession) has been my blog. I’ve poured more hours, more sweat, and more calories into Fervent Foodie than I have for anything else. Through my blog, my obsession with food seeped over into my love of writing, and a fetish for photography developed shortly thereafter. My blog brings all those things I am most passionate about—the things I think, and fret, and fantasize about most—together in one central place.

Earlier this year, I FINALLY made the switch to self-host my website, and with that switch came a newer even weirder passion. I’m talking about the passion for website development and administration. I know this sounds incredibly nerdy, but if you’re thinking about self-hosting a website (or have recently made the switch) I KNOW you understand what I’m saying. Self-hosting gives you an insane amount of flexibility—the hard part is figuring out what tools are out there, what exactly you want, and how the heck to implement it. Implementation proved trickier than I anticipated—so I hit the web looking for help on the ins and outs of WordPress self-hosting. I stumbled upon the Blogging Your Passion website last month, but when I searched for reviews of the program I came up short. So I hesitated.

Then, I decided to sit in on a free webinar with the guys from BYP. In that hour alone I easily learned over five new tools I wanted to implement on my blog, so I stopped hesitating and decided to give their Blogging Your Passion University (BYPU) 201 course a shot. I’ve spent each night over the past week sprawled out on the couch listening to the videos, typing up notes, and making changes to the blog (thank god for pause buttons). I’ve learned more about WordPress, site plugins, SEO, and getting my blog name out there in this week than I have learned in nearly two years of blogging. I’ve gotten so much out of the videos, that I wanted to share my virtual two thumbs up with you all in case you too are searching for help with WordPress self-hosting. The BYPU 201 course is the second in the BYPU series and is geared toward those who already have a self-hosted blog up and running and are looking to take things to the next level. The BYPU 101 course is geared toward those who are just starting out in the blogging world and who need assistance with how to self host WordPress blogs. Both of the courses are ridiculously inexpensive, and I cannot overstate how valuable I have found the 201 videos.

If you are interested, follow these links to read all about the BYPU 101 course and BYPU 201 course.

At the time of this post, the cost of the courses are as follows:

BYPU 101: $18.50 (after 50% discount with promo code “101sale”)
BYPU 201: $37.00 (after $20 discount with promo code “201sale”)

If you are looking to take your self-hosted WordPress blog to the next level OR are just starting out with self-hosting, I highly recommend the BYPU program. The guys also offer a 5-part webinar/video series for $247, which I have not signed up for at this time.

Hope some of you find this information useful!

Taxes for Food Bloggers: Deductions.

Good news, friends.

Blogging Your Passion {BYPU course review}