Overlooked tax write-offs for solopreneurs
feat. insights from accountant Rae Trigg
A recent study by Gusto shows that 10% of people who started their own business in 2024 identified as LGBTQ+. As a queer and trans business owner myself, I totally get it: when we become our own boss, we gain flexibility with how we use our time, agency to say no to working with people who don’t align with our values, and more power to support the causes we care about. But this time of the year, we have to confront one of the most challenging parts of working for ourselves: filing taxes.
I sat down with Rae Trigg (he/they), an accountant with 10 years of experience. He has been self-employed since he launched his own firm, RT Accounting Services, three years ago.
“My last stint before creating my own business was at H&R Block,” Rae tells Queer & Trans Wealth. “I wanted to create a more inclusive and affordable kind of space for folks to come in. I was starting my gender transition at the time, and I had clients who were also in the queer and trans community.”
In Rae’s experience, solopreneurs often overlook these four tax write-offs that they should be deducting from their taxable income to lower their tax bills:
Health insurance premiums
Self-employed people can write off up to 100% of their health insurance premiums as business expenses.
“If folks have a marketplace insurance plan, if they don’t get health insurance through an employer or their spouse, if it’s in their name and they are self-employed, they can write off some of those health insurance premiums on their taxes,” Rae says.
Home office deduction
There are two ways to claim the home office deduction – and I hate to break it to you, sweet reader, but you have to measure your workspace to use either one.
The simplified method allows you to deduct $5 per square foot. So if you exclusively use a 10 foot by 10 foot space in your home as your office, you can claim 100 square feet, which translates to a deduction of $500. You can claim up to 300 square feet, or $1,500 max.
To use the regular method, measure your home office, then the size of your entire home. (If you own your home, you likely received a floor plan when you bought it; if you’re renting, your landlord should have one.) Then, divide the square footage of the home office portion by the square footage of the entire home.
For example, if your home office is 100 square feet and your entire home is 1,000 square feet, your home office takes up 10% of your home. That means you can write off 10% of your standard home expenses—for example, rent, mortgage interest payments, HOA fees, home insurance, and utilities—as business expenses.
Car expenses
Similar to the home office deduction, there are two ways to deduct vehicle mileage expenses.
The current standard rate is 70 cents per mile driven. So if you drove 100 miles for business purposes in 2025, you get a $70 write-off.
Then, there’s the actual expense method.
“This is taken pretty much like the home office deduction,” Rae says, meaning it’s percentage-based: you need to know how many miles you drove for the year, and how many of those miles were driven for business purposes.
“What we’re finding here is the business use of the car. Let’s say for a round number, it’s 10%,” Rae explains. “We take all of our car expenses. This can be registration, license fees, or gas. It could be repairs and oil changes and anything else associated with your car, then we take 10% of that.”
Professional development
If you take classes to enhance your skills, those classes count as professional development expenses, which means they can be deducted.
Professional development includes “continuing education, mentoring, coaching… typically, I’ll have folks come in with things specific for their industry,” Rae says. “Let’s say you’re a medical doctor with your own practice, and you take a QuickBooks training course or a marketing course, something that you’re taking for business purposes. That’s also deductible.”
Rae adds, “Even if you were to go to an out-of-state professional development conference… there’s travel attached to it, and that travel is deductible.”
War tax resistance for small business owners
When I posted about war tax resistance a few weeks ago, the most common question I received was, Can I become a war tax resister as a small business owner or solopreneur?
The simple answer is yes, but you need to understand the risks of withholding your taxes from the IRS as a business owner. We’ll dive deeper into that in next week’s newsletter.
The more complicated answer: there are different levels of resistance. The lowest-risk option is to write off as many expenses to lower your tax liability. The medium risk option is to minimize your quarterly estimated tax payments. Rae explains, “You are going to owe more in taxes when it comes to the tax prep process, but at least you’re not giving the government an interest-free loan.” And the highest-risk option is to withhold the taxes you owe to the IRS altogether.
Next week, we’re publishing a more in-depth guide to war tax resistance for small business owners. Make sure you’re subscribed if you wanna learn more.