Which line on Sched C to enter per return fee or software subscription fee

[Rapid Robert]

Suppose you have Sched C business expenses such as a per-return printing/filing fee paid to your tax professional software vendor, or a monthly fee to Adobe or Microsoft for Software as a Service (SaaS).

Where do you enter it? Commissions/fees? Office Expense? Other expenses (statement)?

[Marcia]

I would charge office expense

[Anarchrist]

Doesn't matter too much. Office, Dues & Subscriptions, Software, Compute Supplies. Personal preference or a need to track from year to year may be a factor. Definitely not Miscellaneous.

[Rapid Robert]

Doesn't matter too much. Office, Dues & Subscriptions, Software, Compute Supplies. Personal preference or a need to track from year to year may be a factor. Definitely not Miscellaneous.

I know it doesn't matter, but my point was, the Schedule C line items seem frozen in the 20th century. The problem is that "Dues & Subscriptions, Software, Compute Supplies." are not line items on Schedule C, so they would have to be in a free-form description listed on a statement for Line 27a "Other expenses".

For my own return, I have been using Line 10 "Commissions and Fees", because these payments are fees as far as I am concerned.

It would only matter when the IRS computer does its "DIF" analysis (or whatever they call it these days) to see if your return for your business code has amounts that are far, far out of the "normal" range. My own return has nowhere near enough profit to attract IRS attention, but I was still curious.

[Anarchrist]

I had plenty of clients in the 20th century who had a lengthy list of items in Other Exp. Listing a few things separately in Other isn't going to increase the DIF score.