How to calculate health care professional cleaning uniform expenses washing at home?

[RaySharpton]

How to calculate health care professional cleaning uniform expenses washing at home?

If I don't use drycleaning, how is the best way to charge for cleaning personal hospital scrubs and labcoats?

$1.50 per washer used?
$1.50 per dryer used?
$0.75 per laundry detergent box?
$0.75 per clorax box?

Per week?

Thanks in advance.

Ray

[Snaggletooth]

Taxes?

Ray, do you have a tax question? This is what we do...

[erchess]

I think

that Ray is a health care worker who wants to know how to deduct his expenses of washing scrubs and lab coats at home.

Ray you need to sit down with a tax adviser where you are. There is no way we can answer your question without knowing a lot about you including such things as whether you are self employed or an employee, how much money you make,, your family situation, and so on. In general trying to claim a tax deduction for doing laundry at home requires a lot of record keeping and gets you very little tax savings. However, there are probably other tax savings open to you and a good tax adviser will ask you a whole lot of questions before trying to give you answers. Good luck!

Since you have a computer you could look for a tax professional near you at www.natptax.com or www.naea.org.

[Zee]

How to calculate health care professional cleaning uniform expenses washing at home?

If I don't use drycleaning, how is the best way to charge for cleaning personal hospital scrubs and labcoats?

$1.50 per washer used?
$1.50 per dryer used?
$0.75 per laundry detergent box?
$0.75 per clorax box?

Per week?

Thanks in advance.

Ray

Ray-

With the fixed amounts you quoted, I'm guessing you utilize a laundromat for your scrubs and health care uniform. If you do, calculating the cost is easy using the actual amounts you pay and keeping a log. Since no receipts are offered by these facilities, you might want to take a digital photo of the machines and detergent dispenser's, etc. showing the costs. This type of expense is deducted on Line 20, Schedule A. These are known as 2% expenses since the total must exceed 2% of your Adjusted Gross Income before any are deductible. If you don't itemize, don't bother. If you are doing your laundry at home, you'll have to estimate the amount of laundry detergent, bleach, etc. that you use to clean those items. Do not include a cost for the washer and dryer.

[ChEAr$]

Doing the wash

I've a client, since retired, who worked for post office. His wife did them at home, and
she should have been a cost accountant! She had very meticulous records and included
costs of water consumed (based on amount used per washer load versus total used in house times number of washes; similar costs allocated for electricity; separate supplies purchased
just for his uniforms. Similar costs of dryer allocated.

And this was before the days of the 2% haircut.

[David1980]

If you're doing it at home you're looking at actual expenses. There's no per diem rates for laundry done at your home.

So, always do the work clothes separate. Always use separate supplies. Consider investing in some kind of power meter to see how much power is consumed by a load of laundry. If possible try to determine the gallons used per load (and if not possible forget about that, water isn't that expensive after all.)

Personally unless you've got a lot of other 2% deductions I think it's far too much hassle for what will amount to either no deduction or a very small deduction.

Now if you do use a laundromat then just use whatever your actual expenses are.