The unintentional freelancer – it’s a title no one ever wants any part of. Not that they have any choice. Would you believe that a full 25% of the American working population considers itself to be in the freelancing or the “consultant” business today? It’s a life no one ever wants – one where you never know when your next paycheck is coming from. If you happen to have a freelance writing job for instance, is there a financial upside to your circumstance? Luckily enough, there is one. The IRS gives you quite a few special tax deductions that you can take advantage of.

The tax deductions that you can claim in a freelance writing job come from the Schedule C of the tax law. What that little law says is that it understands that being in business for yourself, you can claim as a deduction anything that you spend on yourself that you can reasonably convince the IRS was necessary to keep your business afloat. Does that mean that you can buy a nice new iPhone and claim that you needed to make calls for your business? Perhaps not. While the IRS does allowed deductions quite broadly, the final arbiter of whether a deduction is allowed comes down to the IRS auditor. Here’s your short guide to what you might be allowed to claim as a deduction, and what you might not.

Let’s start with the most obvious deduction you will think of – your home office. The successful conduct of a freelance writing job of course, requires that you have a good quiet workspace with the equipment you need, in a properly-located part of your house. As far as the IRS is concerned, you absolutely are allowed to deduct a portion of the rent or mortgage you pay for the area of the house that you use exclusively for your professional writing work. What they won’t allow you to do is to deduct anything for your writing area if there other things you do there as well. If for instance, once you’re done working, your children use your computer to play video games, the IRS is not accepting that. The same goes if your writing space is merely a corner of the living room or the bedroom. The basic rules you need to keep in mind is that they both allow it if the space you use is used for anything else at all.

How about your expenses in making your home livable – the heat, electricity, telephone and the Internet bills and your cable TV bill? Surprisingly, the IRS will allow you to deduct a portion of all of these bills – yes, even cable TV. But there is little catch – they will only allow you to claim a deduction if you have a separate space in your home where you do your writing and do nothing else. If the only space you have to write in is also used for other purposes at other times, the IRS finds that too confusing and will not allow you to deduct anything for your bills.

Any standard business trips you make to meet with the client or to get a new job, the IRS will allow deductions for all of those. All you need to do is to write down every expense you make, every step of the way – every single expense you make in pursuing a job – a subway ride, a taxi fare, tolls, parking charges. They don’t need receipts for anything; they just need to see that you keep a detailed log.