[thelist] taxes and write-offs

Bob Davis bobd at lists.evolt.org
Fri Dec 22 00:18:17 CST 2000


Hi all, 

Please excuse the US-centric question. It does have to do with web-dev in a
way though (at least if you are in the US and do indie work).

I'm thinking about buying a laptop before the end of the year to lessen my
tax burden. I've been doing some contract work (self employed style) and
don't feel like giving it all to the feds.

In short, can I write the whole thing off as a business expense (it'll be
obsolete in a year, though still useable) or do I have to depreciate it?
What have you done?

Thanks. 

<tip type="penance for US centric question on International list"
author="bobdavis">
Grep is your friend.  If you use *nix all the time, you are most likely
familiar with the power of regular expressions, but if you work
predominantly on a Macintosh or Windows machine you may not be.  BBEdit has
a lot of power hidden behind that little "Use Grep" checkbox, as do
Homesite/CF Studio and Dreamweaver.  Take some time to learn how to use it
and you'll be amazed at what you can do.

For instance, if you have a site that you are transitioning to CSS from
older HTML with font tags, this regular expression will find all font tags
(assuming that they are all typed in CAPS):

<[\/]*FONT[^>]*>

If you replace it with nothing, they're all gone.  Keep in mind that with
power comes responsibility.  I've seen things go very wrong with poorly
thought out regular expressions.


Resource:
    Mastering Regular Espressions by Jeffrey Friedl - O'Reilly Publishing

</tip>

-- 

bob davis
bobd at members.evolt.org





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