6 Small Business Deductions for Taxes Every LLC Owner Should Know

You could be sitting on thousands of dollars you were legally allowed to keep — and never even know it.

Every tax season, small business owners overpay. Not because they did anything wrong, but because nobody ever translated the tax code into plain English for them. The tax code isn't just a bill you owe — it's also a list of trades: do this, get that. Most LLC owners only ever see the "owe" side, because the "get that" side is buried in language that reads like it was written to keep you out.

A missed deduction isn't a rounding error. It's real money, every single year, compounding. Miss the same write-off three years running and you've quietly handed the IRS thousands of dollars it was never entitled to.

Here are six small business deductions for taxes that LLC owners commonly miss — translated into plain English, with the actual current numbers straight from the IRS. One note before you dive in: tax rules and dollar limits get adjusted almost every year, so treat these as this year's numbers, not numbers carved in stone. Always worth a quick double-check for the year you're actually filing in.

6 Small Business Deductions for Taxes You're Probably Missing

1. Vehicle Mileage

If you drive for your business — job sites, client meetings, supplier runs — you can write off mileage. Your regular commute from home to a fixed office doesn't count, but nearly everything else does.

The rate this year is 72.5 cents per mile for driving January through June, then it jumps to 76 cents per mile for July through December. Most owners don't track this, not because it's hard, but because nobody told them the phone in their pocket can do it automatically. A simple mileage app handles the tracking and keeps you covered if the IRS ever asks for proof.

Quick math: drive 1,000 business miles in the second half of the year, and that's $760 you can write off just from getting in your car.

2. Home Office

If you have a space in your home used for the business — not the kitchen table between breakfast and a Zoom call, but an actual dedicated space used regularly and exclusively for work — you can write off a portion of your rent or mortgage, utilities, and insurance.

This one is specifically for self-employed owners, not employees on someone else's payroll. The simplified method makes the math easy: $5 for every square foot of space, up to 300 square feet. That closet-turned-office can finally pull its weight on your tax return.

3. Equipment

Here's the normal rule, so the good news actually lands: if you buy a $5,000 piece of equipment, the IRS usually makes you spread that deduction out over the life of the equipment — a little this year, a little more next year. You bought it in January, but you don't feel the tax benefit until years later.

The tax code lets you skip that wait. You can write off the entire cost in the same year you buy it, up to a very high limit that most small business owners will never come close to hitting. In plain English: what you buy this year, you can likely deduct this year, in full.

One catch worth knowing — this write-off can't push your business into a paper loss. It's capped by how much profit the business actually made, and the dollar ceiling does get revisited by the IRS from time to time.

4. Health Insurance

If you're self-employed, you may be able to deduct what you pay for health, dental, and vision insurance premiums for yourself, your spouse, and your dependents. That "may" matters — this deduction has real strings attached:

• You have to have actually made money in the business that year, and you can't deduct more than your net profit.

• If you or your spouse were eligible for an employer-subsidized health plan at any point during the year, that can knock you out of qualifying for certain months.

• It only covers insurance premiums, not your out-of-pocket medical bills.

Tax rules like this one get revisited fairly often, so treat it as a "go check if this applies to you" rather than a guarantee — and bring it to your CPA.

5. Retirement Savings

Putting money away for retirement isn't just good planning — it can be a write-off. Depending on which type of retirement account fits your situation, LLC owners can put away a genuinely meaningful amount and deduct it. The exact math shifts based on your setup — whether you have employees, how the business is structured, how much it's earned — so there's no single clean number that applies to everyone. That's a conversation worth having with your CPA.

But feel this for a second: the same dollar that builds your future is the dollar that shrinks this year's tax bill. Put away $10,000 for retirement, and that's $10,000 your business didn't get taxed on this year. It's not extra money spent — it's money you were already going to save.

6. Startup Costs

If you started your LLC recently — even earlier this year — the cost of getting it off the ground counts too. Market research, legal setup, initial marketing before you had a single customer — none of that is wasted money. Up to $5,000 of it is deductible right away.

Hang on to the receipts. This is a one-time deduction, and you'll want the records to back it up.

The Real Shift

Six write-offs is a great start. But the real shift isn't memorizing a list — it's never having to wonder what you're missing again.

That's exactly what AccountAble Academy's course is built for: cutting through the complexity so your numbers finally make sense, running a more profitable business because you're not leaving money on the table, and deciding with confidence because you're not waiting on someone else to translate your own numbers for you.

Inside the course, there's a whole module called "Command the Conversation," which walks you through exactly what to ask your CPA and when — so every meeting with them works in your favor instead of feeling like you're just handing over a shoebox of receipts and hoping for the best.

Want direct access to me to go through your own specific situation? The Founders Group has a limited number of spots open right now at a limited-time discount, with ongoing access to me to answer your questions.