It’s getting close to that time to get all your receipts ready for your tax deductions for self employed especially if you are an online entrepreneur such as myself. And yes, any money that you make online (in United States) will be taxed. And yes, you are supposed to report all of it. But of course, you can potentially save a lot of money by writing some expenses off.

I know the year isn’t officially over and technically you have until April to get all your tax documents in but it’s always good to get an early start. Matter of fact, you should have probably been tracking all of your income, expenses and remembering to save all those receipts to begin with.

Before I go on, this post is directed towards people paying taxes in the United States who have made money online or by being self-employed in any way. I know there are other countries in which they don’t need to pay any taxes whatsoever. And for the ones that do, I don’t know the details for them.

Earlier this year, I wrote a post on tax deductible expenses for self-employed online entrepreneur in which I listed a few key things that you can write off. You can check it out especially if this is the first year you’re going to do taxes for your online income.

Of course, I will have a list of tax deductions for 2009 posted within the next week or two so you can go through a checklist to make sure you don’t forget anything.

But let’s at least get you started with some of the key tax deductions you should be able to write off…

Travel - Say you need to travel across state to attend a business meeting or maybe you went an affiliate convention. Well, those travel expenses should be written off. And yes, that includes gas money, tolls, plane ticket, etc.

And say you move across country because you just accepted a killer job. Well, if you happen to move more than 50 miles from where you previously lived, then you can write off those travel expenses as well. If you used your own car, you should include 24 cents per mile and also parking fees and stuff like that.

Home Office – I mentioned this in my other post but if you work from home and you have an “office” specifically for work purposes then you can write off just about anything in there. For instance, the chair, desk, lamp, etc you bought to help you work. And it doesn’t stop there… the computer, the electricity, the internet, the phone, your fax machine, etc.

You need all of that to help you function and “work” so you should be able to write those off.

Money Spent Back onto your Business – Say you spend money to make money, ex. affiliate marketer, well, you can write off that as well. Or maybe you spend money on advertising your products? Well, you can write that off. Bought an “how to make money online” eBook recently? Well, you can write that off too!

Those are just a few things that you can write off. Again, I’ll have an entire list of deductible things within the next week or two in full detail so look out for that.

At the end of the day, if you made more than $400 of net income, you’re supposed to report everything to the IRS. I think that number varies by state as well. But all and all, you should always check with an accountant or a professional when handling your finances. I’m just posting what I have learned and what I will be writing off.