Annual Realtor Dues

**sweetboy** · 05-16-2008, 04:08 PM

Hi,

I am a newbie and wanted to know if REALTOR annual fees can be written off as business expenses? The fees I am referring to are the MLS fees, application fees, and local branch fees. Also, what about the gas $$ spent driving around doing open houses and such...

Thanks,

sweetboy

**jamesww** · 05-16-2008, 05:49 PM

Originally Posted by sweetboy

Hi,

I am a newbie and wanted to know if REALTOR annual fees can be written off as business expenses? The fees I am referring to are the MLS fees, application fees, and local branch fees. Also, what about the gas $$ spent driving around doing open houses and such...

Thanks,

sweetboy

Consult a CPA or tax attorney to be sure on this. I am going to answer your question based on my situation and not in a manner that I would be giving legal or tax advice. My CPA has set it up for me so that I do get to write off all the items you have listed in one way or another. As for the cost of fuel I use the milage deduction allowed because it has been greater than a set of itemized costs for driving expenses. I feel that this will most likely change because of the rapid increase of gasoline prices we are seeing this year.

**RE Consulting Services** · 08-07-2008, 03:41 PM

On your schedule C, there is a place to write off expenses for professional membership dues as well as office expenses (ink, printer paper, etc.), uniforms (if you have one such as a logo tee or jacket, etc.), client gifts, tolls, pretty much everything. You are an independant contractor so you'll have to keep track of everything. I don't use an accountant. I use Turbo Tax to file and it's fairly straight forward. It asks you questions and you fill out the blanks. So just be sure to keep track of everything and file it away in an accordion file for easily accessing it later at tax time.

-Angela