Most US freelancers I've watched fall into one of two camps when it comes to deductions. The cautious camp under-deducts — they take the obvious ones (software, office supplies) and skip anything fuzzy, leaving real money on the table. The confident camp over-deducts — they treat anything they pay for during a workday as a business expense and hope no one looks.
Both are wrong. The actual rule is narrower than the cautious camp thinks and looser than the confident camp wants. This post walks the line through real examples — the ones I get asked about most.
If you haven't read receipt tracking for US freelancers in 2026 yet, start there for the system that makes the rest of this tractable.
The two-word test
US tax law (IRC §162) lets you deduct expenses that are ordinary and necessary for your trade or business. Two words, doing a lot of work:
- Ordinary — common and accepted in your field. A photographer's lens is ordinary. A photographer's gym membership is not.
- Necessary — helpful and appropriate, not strictly required. The bar is lower than the word suggests.
The vagueness is intentional. Congress wrote the test to stretch across industries: what's ordinary for a wedding planner isn't ordinary for a programmer, and the law would be unmaintainable if it tried to list everything.
In practice, "ordinary and necessary" comes down to one question you ask honestly: would a reasonable peer in my field do this for business reasons? If yes, it's deductible. If no, it isn't. The IRS will use roughly the same test if they ever look.
Real examples, with the line drawn
Coffee meeting — usually 50%
You have a one-hour meeting with a potential client over coffee. You pay the $12 tab.
Deductible? Yes — at 50%. Business meals are deductible at 50% under IRC §274(n). The TCJA reform in 2017 killed the "entertainment" portion of meals-and-entertainment, but kept business meals as a 50% deduction. The "business meal" definition is "ordinary and necessary in carrying on your trade, not lavish, and you (or an employee) are present." A coffee meeting qualifies.
What to log: who you met with, what the business purpose was, the date, the amount. Receipt or credit card record.
A new laptop — yes, but the how matters
You buy a $1,800 MacBook Pro for client work.
Deductible? Yes, fully. You have two paths:
- Section 179 expensing. Deduct the full $1,800 in the year of purchase. There's a generous annual cap; most freelancers will never hit it.
- Depreciation. Spread the deduction over the useful life (5 years for computers under MACRS). Almost no freelancer chooses this for a single laptop — §179 is faster and simpler.
If you also use the laptop personally, you must allocate by business-use percentage. 80% business / 20% personal means you deduct 80% of $1,800 = $1,440. Be honest about the split. "100% business" on a personal laptop is a common audit flag.
Uber to a client — yes, if it's between business places
You take a $24 Lyft from your home office to a client's office.
Deductible? Yes. Travel between business locations is deductible. So is travel from your home (if it qualifies as your principal place of business) to a client meeting. The commute rule — that travel from home to work isn't deductible — applies to W-2 employees with a fixed workplace, not freelancers with no fixed workplace.
If you take a Lyft from a client meeting to a personal dinner, the work-to-dinner leg isn't deductible. The work-to-work and home-to-work-meeting legs are.
Gym membership — almost never
You're a freelance designer. You pay $80/month for a gym.
Deductible? Almost never. The IRS position is consistent: general fitness is a personal expense, even if you "need to stay healthy to work." The bar for a deductible gym membership is extremely narrow — generally, fitness has to be a direct, documented requirement of the work itself (a personal trainer, a stunt performer, a firefighter facing a fitness test). For a designer, programmer, consultant, or salesperson, no.
I include this one because it's the deduction I get asked about more than any other, and the answer is the answer most people don't want.
Home office — yes, with a method
You work from a 120-square-foot spare bedroom that is used regularly and exclusively for business.
Deductible? Yes. Two methods:
- Simplified method. $5 per square foot, up to 300 sq ft. Your 120-sq-ft office deducts $600/year. No receipts needed, no depreciation tracking, no audit complications. The IRS designed this for freelancers who don't want to itemize home expenses.
- Actual method. Calculate the business-use percentage of your home (120 sq ft / 1,500 sq ft total = 8%), then deduct 8% of mortgage interest, utilities, insurance, repairs, depreciation, etc. Bigger deduction, much more record-keeping.
The trap: "exclusively." If your kids do homework on the desk on weekends, you don't qualify. The IRS interprets "exclusive" strictly. The simplified method is right for most freelancers; the actual method is right for people with high home expenses and a real, dedicated space.
SaaS subscriptions — yes, if used for business
Adobe Creative Cloud, GitHub Pro, Notion, Linear, the AI assistant you use to write copy.
Deductible? Yes, if business-used. This is the easy case. Annual sum, no allocation needed for tools that are clearly work-only. For mixed-use tools (Notion accounts shared with personal projects, ChatGPT, Spotify), allocate by usage and be honest. A 100%-business deduction on a tool you also use personally is, again, an easy audit flag.
Books, courses, conferences — yes, if directly related to your work
A $34 book on copywriting, a $400 React course, a $1,200 conference.
Deductible? Yes, if related to your current work, not training for a new line of work. IRS Publication 535 (the now-deprecated but still-cited canonical reference) and §162 cover "educational expenses that maintain or improve skills required in your present work." A copywriter buying a copywriting book — clearly deductible. A copywriter buying a book on starting a yoga studio — that's "training for a new business," not deductible. The line is "does this help you do your current job better."
Phone and internet — proportional
You use your phone and home internet for both work and personal life.
Deductible? Yes, by business-use percentage. 60% business use = 60% of your phone bill, 60% of your internet. The math is rough by design — keep a usage log for a representative month and use that ratio. Don't claim 100% on a personal phone.
Where the line gets fuzzy
Three categories where reasonable people disagree:
Clothing for business. A suit you'd wear to a client meeting and also to a wedding? Not deductible. A branded uniform with your company logo? Yes. The test is whether it's "adaptable to general use." Most freelancer wardrobe purchases fail this test, even when they feel "for work."
Commuting versus business travel. If you regularly drive to a single client site for a long project, that travel can start to look like a commute. The longer the engagement and the more fixed the location, the worse the deduction looks. Short, varied, multi-client travel is clearly deductible; year-long single-client work at a fixed office is grey.
Mixed-purpose trips. A conference in Austin where you also see family. The conference fee and the days you attended sessions are deductible. The extra two days you stayed for personal reasons aren't. The flight is generally deductible if the primary purpose of the trip was business — but document the days breakdown.
The honest take
Three things I'd say to a freelancer I cared about:
- Track everything, claim what's defensible. Not the same thing. The first is hygiene; the second is judgment. The first protects you; the second is what your CPA helps with.
- The biggest deduction most freelancers miss is the one they could take. It's home office, business mileage, or a real estimate of phone/internet usage. People skip these because they sound audit-bait. They aren't — they're standard deductions that real CPAs file every day.
- The biggest mistake the confident camp makes is claiming things that aren't theirs. Personal Uber rides logged as business, family dinners logged as client meetings, vacations logged as conferences. The IRS isn't psychic, but they don't have to be — patterns show up, and the penalty for substantial understatement of tax is 20% on top of what you owed, plus interest.
The middle path is unglamorous but it's the right one. Capture the receipt at point of sale, log a one-line business purpose, and let your CPA (or yourself, with a clear head in February) decide which ones make the return. The system in receipt tracking for US freelancers in 2026 handles the capture half. The how-long-to-keep-them half lives in which receipts to keep, which to throw away.