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Buyer's Guide - If you're in business for yourself and haven't incorporated or created an LLC

Updated: 11/07/2012
Article ID: GEN12404

If so, you don't need TurboTax Business, you would be better assisted by TurboTax Home & Business!

TurboTax Home & Business has everything you need to file your Schedule C or your Schedule F, if you run a farm or a ranch. The desktop version also includes a program to prepare W-2 and 1099 forms for people who worked for you during the year.

Choose TurboTax Home & Business for self-employment and personal taxes.

Do you have employees and/or pay contract workers to help in your business?

TurboTax Desktop Home & Business includes the W-2/1099 Reporter, a program that guides you through preparing W-2 forms for your employees, the required W-3 form for the federal government, and 1099-MISC forms for anyone who did contract or casual labor work for you during the year.

This is a must-have for any business with at least one employee. You're required to give W-2s to your employees and 1099s to contract workers by January 31 following the tax year.

TurboTax Home & Business is the only version of personal TurboTax that includes the W-2/1099 Reporter!

Choose TurboTax Home & Business for self-employment and personal taxes.

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Do you run your business out of your home?

Take advantage of the expanded interview for home and office included in TurboTax Home & Business. This program walks you through deducting part of the costs of owning and maintaining your home, such as utilities, your rent or house payment, homeowners insurance, and cable or DSL line expenses. You also take depreciation for the part of the home you use to run your business. The interview considers each type of deduction in fine detail, with lots of real-life examples and illustrations to help you apply the rules to your business situation.

Did you move your home office from one house to another? No worries! TurboTax Home & Business will walk you through allocating your home-related costs between the two places.

If you're running a daycare business from your home, TurboTax Home & Business addresses your home office deduction specifically with daycare use in mind. Whether you have special parts of your home that you use for daycare or your entire home is used, TurboTax will figure the right home office deduction for you based on the size of your home and the number of hours it's used for daycare.

Choose TurboTax Home & Business for self-employment and personal taxes.

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Do you have two home-based businesses?

Quite often this happens when both spouses run their own self-employed businesses out of their jointly owned home. Sometimes each spouse has his or her own office space in the home, or perhaps both share one room as "the office."

TurboTax Home & Business is essential for your tax preparation needs! Each business will take the home office deduction; TurboTax Home & Business walks you through figuring out how much of the home office is attributed to each business and will make sure your home office costs are allocated correctly between the two businesses.

Choose TurboTax Home & Business for self-employment and personal taxes.

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Did you buy equipment, furniture, cars, or other major products for use in your business?

Tax rules will require you to take a depreciation deduction for some of those purchases. As you may know, depreciation is a tax rule that requires you to deduct the cost of your purchases over a number of years. There's also a special rule called the "Section 179 deduction" that allows you to take a large deduction for the whole cost of your purchases up to a fairly large limit so that you can avoid having to use depreciation.

The IRS rules for depreciation are multifaceted and can be tough to navigate. The Depreciation Expert included in TurboTax Home & Business explains in detail each step you need to complete the depreciation forms and get the maximum depreciation deduction you're allowed. What's more, the Depreciation Expert will help you enter assets you've been depreciating for your business in the past, even if you haven't used TurboTax before.

Choose TurboTax Home & Business for self-employment and personal taxes.

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Are you a day trader?

TurboTax Home & Business is perfect for you. Not only do you receive the benefit of in-depth business deduction advice, you can also take advantage of our Cost Basis Lookup feature in the investments section.

This feature helps you determine the cost basis for securities in case your records are less than complete. It also includes historical information about stock splits, spin-offs, mergers, and other corporate transactions affecting the basis of the shares you trade in.

Have too many transactions to enter manually into TurboTax? Save yourself some time and download your transactions from your broker or financial institution right into TurboTax. TurboTax Home & Business can download from most financial institutions, including popular online brokers such as AMERITRADE and E*TRADE.

If you're trading on margin, TurboTax Home & Business will help you maximize the investment interest expense deduction and will help identify other investment-related deductions to offset your trading income.

Choose TurboTax Home & Business for self-employment and personal taxes.

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Are you in the business of farming or ranching?

TurboTax Home & Business has everything you need to report your farming or ranching income as with any other type of business. What's more, TurboTax Home & Business includes Schedule J, Farm Income Averaging, which allows you to average your income over the past three years if you've had more income from farming this year than you've had in any of those previous years.

 

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