How to Make money with a home based, without ever making a sale (and earn points while you are at it)

Disclaimer: I’m not an accountant.

But, I can count. And I can add and subtract too. I just won’t count for you. Deal? Deal.

Most employed people don’t seem to be aware of all the tax benefits of owning a home based business (the reason I say “owning” instead of “running” will become apparent in later posts – you can hire contractors to do the work for you, but that’s not the point of this article).  By the time you add all the expense deductions up from a home-based business, you may be looking at thousands of dollars in saved taxes.

Your magic number depends on what your tax bracket is, and how much in business expenses you deduct from you “job” income.

Let’s say my monthly expense write-off numbers are something like this:

$900 per month in business expenses means $10,800 per year written off against the employee income.

This may sound a little steep, but when you figure in travel and automobile expenses, it does not take long to add up. My wife (who also happens to be involved in my my business) and I went on a cruise-convention for business. Guess what – it was for business. Did I have fun? Sure. Did I do business? Absolutely. Did I write most of it off? Sure did.

In a 25% tax bracket, $10,800 in expenses is $2,700 per year in tax savings.  If the business cost me $1,200 per year in basic costs (licensing, inventory, etc.), then I essentially doubled my money in tax alone, before I ever made a sale. 100% return.

Any sales I made are simply added on top of those returns. If I made $1,200 that year it pays for my costs and I still get to apply the $10,800 in expenses against any employment income.

Now: the dilemma. “But I don’t know what to do for a business?” No problem. There are lots of interesting ones out there for you already, no ideas necessary.

Here are some interesting and fun turn-key home-based business ideas that I have run across in the past few weeks:

A) “Lay-away Plan” for a home with a twist. Lay-away means that you buy the house in small payments over time, in advance, which means you have no mortgage. And, NO INTEREST!  The twist is there is profit sharing from the company that you purchase the home from, which subsidizes your purchase (wholly or in-part).  Refer a friend and you get more profit sharing. Very cool. And what a great way to write off your mortgage. Oops, you won’t have a mortgage, so I guess it’s just a great way to write off your house.

B) Gas Saving Pills. These little beauties not only save you gas, but they also help reduce environmental emissions so they are green. Anybody want to write off their gas bill or car payments? I am sure you could get creative with that one.

C) Online learning. I have seen a couple of these and it’s a neat idea. You get up-to-date learning tools (for example, videos). Learning (and helping people learn) becomes your business. If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. What a great way to write off tuition.

Just some ideas, I could go on. Contact me if you need more.

We also offer home-business ideas through Your Leverage Rewards, so you get even more back by collecting points.  Imagine that, collecting points on your home-based business.

Anyway, there you have it. How to make money with a home based business before you even make a sale. And, if you need funding for the business I’ve shown you how to do that too (and collect points doing it).

Enjoy!

Doug Anderson