Re: Tax deduction question
Like Boomyal said, you can go to "My Ebay" and find the prompt that lets you look back at your history and reprint the receipts. Or else I'm sure you got an email when you won the auction that stated the price...go to your deleted items box and see if you still have the emails for the purchases. If you can't prove the purchases in writing, I certainly wouldn't try to claim deductions on them.<br /><br />As a side note, your state may require that you pay a "use tax" which is basically sales tax on the purchase if the seller didn't collect sales tax from you (and probably didn't if you bought it from someone outside of your state). This is commonly "overlooked" and not paid...everyone thinks they can "save" state sales tax by buying things out of state, Ebay, on-line, and mail-order, but it's illegal in most states.<br /><br />So...if you do manage to document the purchase, and you plan to deduct it as a business expense, you darn well better also pay the state the use tax for this computer on your state income 1040 form at the end of the year. If you don't cover all these bases, you could raise red flags for an audit. And if you're audited, you'll lose.
