By Steve Forbes, Jr. | Managing Partner of Forbes & Company
For most social media influencers, the phone in your hand, the Wi-Fi in your living room and the home you film in aren’t just personal conveniences. They’re the core tools of your business, and they’re working for your brand almost every day. Yet these are some of the deductions creators miss most often, mainly because the bills are paid from personal accounts and never make it into the business books.
At Forbes & Company, we work with social media influencers and entertainers from our offices in Alpharetta, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina, and we serve creators all across the country. Here’s how to make sure the business share of your phone, internet and home expenses is working to lower your tax bill instead of slipping through the cracks.
Why these deductions are so often overlooked
Why do influencers miss phone, internet and home office deductions?
The short answer is that these expenses look personal on paper. Your phone plan is probably on a personal credit card, your internet bill is set to autopay from your household checking account and your rent or mortgage comes out of the same account you use for groceries. When it’s time to file, anything that never touched your business account or bookkeeping software is easy to forget, even though the IRS allows you to deduct the business-use portion.
These costs are also recurring, which makes them more valuable than they seem. A missed $70 a month adds up to $840 a year, and when you combine phone, internet and a share of household expenses, it’s not unusual for the overlooked total to reach several thousand dollars. Because creators who are self-employed pay both income tax and self-employment tax on their profit, every legitimate deduction lowers both.
Can influencers deduct their phone?
How does the cell phone deduction work for content creators?
Yes, the business-use portion of your phone is generally deductible. If you shoot, edit and post content on your phone, answer brand emails, manage DMs with partners and run your analytics from it, a meaningful share of its use is business-related. You can generally deduct that percentage of your monthly service plan, along with the business share of the phone itself, which can often be written off in the year you buy it.
The key is a reasonable, documented business-use percentage. A good approach is to review your usage for a representative period, such as a few typical weeks, and note how much time goes to business activities compared to personal use. Your phone’s screen time reports, app usage data and call logs can all help support the percentage you choose. If you have a family plan, only your own line counts, and accessories you buy specifically for content, like gimbals, lenses and mics, are generally business equipment in their own right.
What about a landline at home?
The tax code doesn’t allow a deduction for the basic monthly service on the first landline into your home, even if you work from home. A separate line used only for your business is a different story, and its cost is generally deductible.
Can influencers deduct their internet?
How much of your home internet is deductible?
Your home internet works much like your phone. If you upload videos, livestream, edit in the cloud, run your social accounts and communicate with brands over your home connection, you can generally deduct the business-use percentage of the monthly bill. Creators who livestream or upload large video files often find their business share is substantial, and if you’ve upgraded to a faster plan specifically to support your content, that’s worth noting in your records.
As with your phone, the percentage needs to be reasonable and supported. A simple log of business versus personal use during a sample period, combined with notes on why your plan level is needed for your work, gives you a solid foundation. If you have a second internet connection used only for your business, the full cost of that connection is generally deductible.
Can influencers take the home office deduction?
What are the rules for a home office or home studio?
Many creators can qualify for the home office deduction, which lets you deduct a share of certain household expenses. To qualify, the space generally has to meet two tests:
- Regular and exclusive use: You use a specific, identifiable area of your home consistently for your business, and you don’t use that area for anything personal. A spare bedroom set up full time as your filming studio or editing suite can qualify, while a corner of the living room where you also watch TV with your family won’t.
- Principal place of business: The space is the main place where you run your business. This test can be met even if you film on location, as long as you use the space for administrative or management work, like editing, invoicing, planning content and negotiating brand deals, and you don’t have another fixed location where you do that work.
There’s also a helpful exception for creators who sell merch. If your home is the only fixed location of a business that sells products, space you use regularly to store inventory or product samples can qualify even if it isn’t used exclusively for business, as long as it’s a separately identifiable space.
IRS Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home, walks through these tests in detail, including examples of what does and doesn’t qualify.
What household expenses can you deduct with a home office?
Once you qualify, you can generally deduct two kinds of expenses:
- Direct expenses that apply only to the business space, such as painting your studio, installing soundproofing in that room or repairs made only there, are generally deductible in full.
- Indirect expenses that benefit your whole home are deductible based on the percentage of your home used for business. These include rent, mortgage interest, property taxes, homeowners or renters insurance, utilities, HOA fees, general repairs and security systems. Homeowners can also claim depreciation on the business portion of the home.
Your business percentage is usually figured by dividing the square footage of the business space by the total square footage of your home. A 200-square-foot studio in a 1,600-square-foot home, for example, gives you a 12.5% business-use percentage.
Should you use the simplified method or the regular method?
The IRS offers two ways to calculate the deduction. The simplified method lets you deduct $5 per square foot of business space, up to 300 square feet, for a maximum of $1,500 a year. It requires very little recordkeeping, and homeowners don’t claim depreciation, which means there’s nothing to recapture when you sell your home.
The regular method uses your actual expenses and is reported on Form 8829. It takes more work, but it often produces a much larger deduction, especially for creators who rent in higher-cost areas or use a large space for their studio. Here’s a simple comparison. Suppose you rent a 1,200-square-foot apartment for $2,400 a month, spend $3,000 a year on utilities and $240 on renters insurance, and use a 200-square-foot room exclusively as your studio. That room is about 16.7% of your home, so the regular method would produce a deduction of roughly $5,340, compared to $1,000 under the simplified method.
You can choose whichever method gives you the better result each year, so it’s worth running both.
Are there limits on the home office deduction?
There are a few. Your home office deduction generally can’t exceed the income from your business after your other business expenses, so it can’t create a loss on its own. Under the regular method, any amount you can’t use carries forward to future years, while the simplified method doesn’t allow a carryover. Homeowners using the regular method should also know that depreciation claimed on a home office after May 6, 1997 is generally taxable when you sell your home, even if the rest of your gain is excluded under the home sale rules.
What if your influencer business is an S corporation?
Can S corporation owners deduct home office, phone and internet costs?
This is an important wrinkle. If your creator business has elected S corporation status, you’re an employee of your own company, and employees can no longer deduct unreimbursed business expenses on their personal returns. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act suspended that deduction, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act made the change permanent.
The solution is an accountable plan, which is a written reimbursement policy that lets your S corporation repay you for the business share of your home office, phone and internet. When it’s set up and followed correctly, the reimbursements are deductible to the company and aren’t taxable income to you. The plan requires that each expense has a business purpose, that you document it with the details the company needs and that any excess reimbursement is returned, so it’s worth putting in place with your CPA rather than improvising. Partners in partnerships face different rules and may be able to deduct certain unreimbursed expenses if the partnership agreement requires them to pay those costs personally.
How to capture these deductions without the headache
What records should influencers keep?
The goal is to turn expenses that live in your personal accounts into clean business records. A few simple habits make that easy:
- Save your statements. Download a year’s worth of phone, internet, utility, rent or mortgage, insurance and property tax statements, or set up an automatic folder where they land each month.
- Document your business-use percentages. Keep a short log from a representative period showing how you use your phone and internet, along with screen time or app data that supports it.
- Measure and photograph your space. Record the square footage of your studio or office and your whole home, and take photos showing that the space is set up and used only for your business.
- Record the expenses in your books. If you pay from a personal account, enter the business share in your bookkeeping as an owner contribution or, for an S corporation, submit it for reimbursement under your accountable plan.
- Consider moving business-only costs to a business account. A dedicated business phone line or a second internet connection paid from your business account makes the deduction cleaner and the business purpose obvious.
How much could these deductions save?
Here’s an illustration for a self-employed creator. Using the home studio example above, add $756 for 70% business use of a $90 monthly internet plan and $720 for 60% business use of a $100 monthly phone plan. The total comes to roughly $6,800 in deductions. For a creator in the 22% federal bracket who also pays self-employment tax, that could reduce combined income and self-employment taxes by around $2,000 every year, simply by recording expenses that were already being paid.
Your influencer home, phone and internet deduction checklist
Before year-end, work through the following with your tax advisor:
- Gather the year’s phone, internet and household expense statements, even if they were paid personally
- Determine and document a reasonable business-use percentage for your phone and internet
- Confirm that your studio or office space is used regularly and exclusively for your business
- Measure your business space and your home’s total square footage
- Compare the simplified and regular home office methods
- Record the business share of personal-account expenses in your bookkeeping
- Set up an accountable plan if your business is an S corporation
- Consider a dedicated business phone line or internet connection paid from your business account
Frequently asked questions
Can influencers deduct their cell phone bill? Yes, generally the business-use percentage of your phone service and the phone itself is deductible, as long as you can support the percentage with reasonable records.
Is home internet tax deductible for content creators? The business-use portion of your home internet is generally deductible, and a separate connection used only for business is generally fully deductible.
Does a home filming studio qualify for the home office deduction? It can, if the space is used regularly and exclusively for your business and it’s your principal place of business or meets another qualifying test. A room that’s also used for personal activities won’t qualify.
Can I take the home office deduction if I rent? Yes. Renters can deduct the business percentage of their rent, utilities and renters insurance, and they often benefit the most from the regular method.
Why can’t I deduct these expenses if my business is an S corporation? S corporation owners who work in the business are employees, and employees can’t deduct unreimbursed business expenses. An accountable plan lets the company reimburse you and deduct the cost instead.
Let Forbes & Company help you claim what you’ve earned
Forbes & Company is a family-owned accounting firm that’s been client-focused since 1997, and we love helping social media influencers and entertainers make sense of their taxes so they can get back to creating. Whether you’re in the greater Atlanta area, the Charleston area or anywhere across the United States, we’d be glad to help you identify the deductions hiding in your personal accounts and set up simple systems to capture them every year. Shoot us your information, and we’ll set up some time to talk.