Claiming small business expenses for tax day/receipts

For those doing their taxes...I have a lot of stuff to claim from 2009 - hundreds of domain name purchases/renewals. My question is what kind of proof should I have ready for it (in case I'm audited) - do I really have to have every single auto-email from every purchase, or is a list of expenses from my online credit card bill good enough?

 

I can't speak specifically for NY, but in general I'd guess

Yes. Probably preferably printed out and for them to be proper invoices in a format required by your tax authorities, and properly ordered.

No. It may be ancilliary proof that the money was spent by you personally and is "owed" to you by the company, but it's unlikely to be sufficient without the the invoices if your taxes are audited as the credit card could have been used to purchase anything.

 

If your deductions gets audited you generally need to show the invoices / receipts and the corresponding bank statements.

 

name.com will let you re-generate invoices later. I normally do it at the end of the year and save them as PDFs in my tax folder. I do all recordkeeping paperlessly, so being able to make them online saves a step - one more reason to enjoy name.com.

 

You need to have a receipt from every single domain purchase. If you don't want to go one by one, maybe you can copy and paste them all into a single Word document and then print that entire file.

Since we're still early in 2010, you should get into the habit of printing your domain purchase receipts and filing them away. That way you won't have to go through this next year.