Sure, you could pay taxes—or you could buy office supplies. 

OK, so it’s not quite that simple: buying a new stapler won’t get you a free pass on taxes. But you can deduct office supplies and expenses when you file your taxes to lower the amount you owe. Here’s everything to know about deducting office supplies.

What qualifies as office supplies?

Office supplies can include items like:

• Traditional office supplies (staplers, paper clips, pens, ink cartridges, USB drives)

• Cleaning supplies (examples: brooms, paper towels, cleaning solution)

• Bathroom supplies (toilet paper, soap)

• Storage (filing cabinets, shelves, lockers)

• Record keeping supplies (invoices, sales receipts)

• Paper plates and plastic utensils

• Food or drink for the employee break room

Postage can also count, unless it’s postage in large amounts for shipping out your products. Don’t worry—you can still deduct that, along with supplies for shipping and packaging products, just not under office supplies (under cost of goods sold). 

What qualifies as office expenses?

Office expenses may include things like:

• Cloud services (Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive)

• Hosting fees, domain names, and maintenance for websites and apps

• Desktop of cloud-based software (Microsoft, QuickBooks)

• Devices and device fees (desktop computers, laptops, phones, iPads, tablets)

Office expenses that are especially high may qualify as business equipment, which you can classify as an asset and depreciate. 

How much can I deduct?

To deduct office supplies and expenses, you must have used them that year. If you buy a ton of paper but don’t use it all in the year you bought it, for example, you’d only deduct the expense for the amount you used. The rest you can deduct later, as you use it. 

You also have to demonstrate that the expenses were necessary and ordinary business expenses. Mainly what this means is that you didn’t go over and above what a business would need to purchase, and that you used the purchased supplies for work, not personal stuff. 

As long as you meet these requirements, you can deduct 100% of your office supplies and expenses on your tax return. Pretty neat, huh?

Where do I deduct office supplies?

Deduct your office supplies and expenses in the “expenses” or “deductions” section of your Schedule C.