Rules for Expensing Cell Phones Plans & Charges

[Leo]

My wife and I were going over the call list from her Verizon cell phone, and we noticed that approximately 90% of the calls made were business related... The other 10% is me, and many times we talk about the business, but we are mobile to mobile, so probably it does not count.

Then I asked about her data plan and she told me that she only uses data on Facebook to do the social media marketing (ever her personal account is all about the business and the sales and events that we have), and also do run maps to navigate to client's locations.

This is a cell phone (and number) that she owned before starting our business. It is her only phone and the business has a landline. But she also just hired a new employee, which is allowing her to conduct a majority of her business offsite. Also: Her cell phone is listed in the company's official website and e-mail signatures.

I work (my daytime job) in a company that either buy the phones to employees or give them a $50 stipend to the people who choose to use their personal cell.

My goal is to be able to claim my wife's cell phone as a business expense, but I would like to know more about what I need to prove, or the type of documentation that I would need to keep in order to justify the shift from personal to business expense..

Could anyone shed some light on this? (Whether it is a good idea or not, and what should I do to make sure that it is legit and well documented).

Thanks

P.S. - I am not asking about a Self-Employment tax deduction for a cell phone. I am talking about a cell phone contract for the business owner paid by the business.

[Harold Mansfield]

I'm confused. You say this is her personal phone, and then say you're asking about a business phone. I assume if you had a separate phone for business this wouldn't be an issue.

Instead of trying to nickle and dime your bill to maybe get pennies from Uncle Sam, I think the better solution is from here on out to purchase a phone or get a separate line for business. You started out making 2 mistakes: Using your personal phone number for business and using personal social media accounts for business, for which you cannot get any value. Both are easy to rectify.

I seriously think trying to itemize a cell phone bill is more time and trouble than it's really worth. It's not as if we're in the 90's and cell bills are thousands of dollars, or you travel a lot and get roaming and international call charges. Sounds like you use one phone as your main phone (by choice) and it's not costing you more to make one call over another. So your bill would be the same no matter who you called, right?

Or just decide that part of the cell bill is a business expense exactly the same way your employer does it with a monthly stipend.

JMO of course.

[Freelancier]

What my accountant told me was that as long as exactly one phone line in the home was NOT a business expense, the rest could be. So our cell phones are both business expenses, the expensive landline is a business expense. The one cheap VOIP line we have here for something is not expensed to any business, so that qualifies as our personal line. We don't itemize anything and the only receipt that gets recorded is the first page of the bills which lists the totals.

IANAA. Check with your accountant to make sure this isn't a random troll posting incorrect information on a free forum.