12 Deductions Freelancers Almost Always Miss

• Home office — actual expenses or simplified $5/sq ft (up to 300 sq ft).
• Vehicle mileage — $0.67/business mile in 2024 (track it; don't estimate).
• Phone and internet — the business-use percentage of your monthly bills.
• Health insurance premiums — fully deductible if self-employed and not on a spouse's plan.
• Retirement contributions — SEP-IRA, Solo 401(k), traditional IRA reduce taxable income.
• Continuing education — courses, books, certifications related to your work.
• Software subscriptions — every SaaS tool you use for work, including the obvious ones.
• Bank and payment processing fees — Stripe fees, Square fees, business bank fees.
• Business meals — 50% deductible when there's a clear business purpose.
• Travel for work — flights, hotels, ground transport when traveling for clients.
• Equipment depreciation — Section 179 lets you deduct full cost of laptops, monitors, cameras in year of purchase.
• Professional services — bookkeeper, accountant, lawyer fees related to the business.

Quick sanity check: a $4,000 missed deduction costs roughly $1,200 in extra taxes for a typical freelancer. Six missed deductions a year easily adds up to a vacation.

By April you'll have forgotten 80% of your expenses. The fix: log them in real time as you spend. TaxClutch's deductions tracker accepts categorized expenses, recurring deductions (rent, software), and bank-statement imports — and shows exactly how much each deduction saves you in taxes.