What else counts — the deductions officials miss

Most officials claim mileage and stop. Mileage is the biggest single one, but it is not the only one, and the rest are hiding in ordinary spending you already do. The point of this page is to make you think of them before April.

Two ground rules before the list.

First, RefTraq does not decide any of this. It keeps the record; you and your tax professional decide what goes on the return. Nothing here is tax advice.

Second, not everything on this page is equally safe, and a list that does not say so is doing you a disservice. Each section is marked:

• Solid — an ordinary business expense. Keep the receipt and move on.
• Needs a record — defensible, and it depends on you being able to show what the business purpose was. Without the record it is worse than not claiming it.
• Ask your CPA — there is an argument, and there is also a good chance the answer is no for you specifically.
• Depends — a real deduction for the people who pass a test, and nothing at all for the people who do not. The section says what the test is and where RefTraq checks it.

Things you buy

Solid. Whistles, flags, bean bags, indicators, cards, timers, a game-day bag. Uniforms and officiating shoes — and their cleaning, which almost nobody logs. Rulebooks, casebooks, mechanics manuals.

The clothing rule is stricter than people expect: something is deductible only if it is not suitable for everyday wear. A striped shirt passes. A blazer your chapter requires for meetings does not, however strictly they require it.

A gear bag or a travel case is not clothing at all — it is equipment, and it is deductible for the share of its use that is officiating.

Your home office

Depends — only if it passes the home-office test (the app checks).

A home office is not an ordinary expense you can log and forget. It counts only if the space passes the home-office test — used regularly and only for officiating, and the one fixed place you do the paperwork — and most officials fail it on exclusive use. On Taxes, "Do you have a home office? Three questions" opens the Home office screen, which runs that test with your answers and says where you stand; the Home office page in this guide explains each part of it.

If you have a space used only for officiating work — scheduling, invoicing, records, film — the desk, the chair, the filing cabinet, the second monitor and the office supplies that go through it are all business costs. So is work done to improve that space.

The catch is that furniture and construction are usually assets, not expenses. Above a modest threshold they are written off over years, or elected in one year under a specific rule, and improvements to the space itself come back when you sell the house. That is your CPA's paperwork, not a reason to skip it — but it is why RefTraq flags these rather than dropping them into the same bucket as a new whistle.

Write down when you bought it. The first thing a preparer asks about anything that lasts for years is "about when did you buy it?" — the month is enough — and what it cost. And when you sell it, trade it in or throw it out, they need to know when it went and what you got for it, even if that was nothing: something that was written off over years has to be accounted for on the way out too. The Deduction review asks for both.

The Home office page in this guide covers the test in full, which is the part most officials fail on a technicality they could fix in an afternoon.

The lines a preparer asks for and most people merge

These are separate blanks on a tax preparer's own form, and officials tend to keep them as one. Splitting them costs nothing and stops a number getting lost inside another one.

• Shoes, apart from the rest of the uniform. The test is different, too: a badged shirt is obviously not everyday wear, where a plain black shoe needs you to be honest about whether you wear it anywhere else.
• Washing and dry-cleaning the uniform. Deductible where the uniform is, and almost nobody keeps a receipt — a reasonable figure you can explain, written down at the time, is what gets asked for.
• Buying a phone, radio, headset or watch, apart from the monthly bill. Buying a phone is not paying for a phone. Same business share as the bill; and if it was expensive, it may be an asset your preparer writes off over years rather than a cost this year.
• Publications — a newspaper, a rules periodical, a chapter bulletin — apart from streaming. Kept separate on purpose, so a rulebook subscription never has to be argued about alongside a household media split.
• Getting to a clinic, not just the fee for it. A preparer asks about both in the same breath. If you drove, log it as mileage instead so it is not counted twice.

A unit you rent to keep gear in

Solid — and easier than the home office, which is why it gets missed.

If you rent a storage unit, a garage or a building away from the house and keep your officiating gear in it, that rent is an ordinary business cost. It goes on its own line of the Schedule C — rent on business property — not in with travel and not in the catch-all.

The home office rules do not apply to it. Those rules are about the place you live. A unit you rent somewhere else is not your home, so there is no exclusive-use test to pass and no argument about whether it is your principal place of business. Officials skip this deduction because they have half-heard the home office rules and assume the same bar applies.

The inversion is worth holding on to:

Off-season storage still counts. Somewhere to keep your gear between seasons is the unit doing its job, not a gap in the year.

So does securing it. A lock, a camera or an alarm for a unit that holds only your officiating gear is a cost of that unit, the same as its rent. Security on your home is a different question — it counts only through a qualifying home office, at the office's share; the home office page explains it.

The one thing to be straight about: if the household overflow is in there too — the Christmas boxes, the old sofa — then it is shared, and only the business share is deductible. Work out a fair split and write down how you got it.

Things you pay for every month

Solid, at the business share — never the whole bill.

• Cell phone. RefTraq defaults to 40%. Set it to whatever is honest for you.
• Internet. Same idea. A household line is mostly personal.
• Software — your assigning platform's fees, accounting or mileage apps, and RefTraq itself once it is paid. RefTraq adds that one to your expenses for you, the day you pay.
• Bank fees on an account you keep for officiating.
• Tax preparation, for the business part of your return, in the year you pay it. Reviewing 2026, that is what you paid in 2026 for your 2025 return. The fee you pay next spring for your 2026 return goes in your 2027 review.

Money taken out before you see it

Solid, but only once — and how you recorded your pay decides where it goes.

Assignor fees, chapter fees and payment-processing charges are withheld from your pay before it reaches you. What matters is which figure you recorded as received:

• What reached you (the deposit). This is the usual case: ArbiterPay and most assigners deposit the game fee with their cut already out. Then the fee is already missing from your income, and deducting it as well would count it twice. Eric Taylor works 20 Dillon HS games at $100, ArbiterPay keeps $3 a game, and he records the $97 deposits: $1,940 received. That $1,940 is already net of the $60. The fee isn't an expense, but tell your preparer about it: if your 1099 shows the full $2,000, your preparer may report that and take the $60 off against it.
• The full game fee, before the cut. If you recorded $100 a game, the $60 never reached you and is a business expense like any other.

The Deduction Review asks which one it is. Answer After the fee and the fee is not added as an expense: it is printed as a note for your preparer, on the review, the tax meeting sheet and your export. If an earlier answer already added it as an expense, the review lists those rows for you to open and delete (it never deletes anything itself). Answer Before the fee and it is added under Assignor & Chapter Fees. Your assigner statement or payment history shows both figures. Quick add and an imported file say the same about a fee somebody took, and imported rows like that start unchecked.

Travel that is not mileage

Solid.

• Parking and tolls. These are deductible on top of the mileage rate, whichever method you use. They are not covered by the per-mile figure.
• Lodging for an overnight assignment — a playoff run, a tournament.
• Airfare, a rental car, baggage fees for a state-level assignment.
• Meals, at 50%, when the trip keeps you away overnight. Day-trip meals generally do not qualify, even when you are given a per diem.

Nights you were away

Being away overnight is a gate, not a deduction. Clearing it is what makes lodging and meals deductible on a trip — so the nights themselves are evidence, and the evidence is the thing nobody keeps.

RefTraq works them out from your own schedule. Taxes → Nights away reads your games, your venues and the drives you have measured, and proposes which nights you were probably away — with the reason written out, so you can see why it thinks so:

• a late kick-off a long way from home, where the drive back would put you in after midnight;
• an early start a long way from home, which is a night before, not a morning drive;
• games on back-to-back days at the same distant place.

It proposes. You decide. Keep the ones that are right and clear the ones that are not — it remembers what you cleared so it stops suggesting them. It can only see what is on your schedule, so a night it missed is yours to remember.

It will not guess at a distance. A venue you have never measured produces no night at all, in either direction, and is listed separately so you can go and measure it. A missing drive time is not the same as a short one.

Lodging on such a trip is deductible at what it actually cost — and if you are self-employed, that is the only way: the federal per-diem rates include a lodging figure, but a self-employed person may not use it. Meals on the same trip are a different line and RefTraq already handles them conservatively.

Turning the count into money is your preparer's arithmetic. For meals on those trips, a preparer usually takes the federal meals-and-incidentals (M&IE) rate for where you stayed, multiplies it by the nights, and counts half. RefTraq counts the nights and never supplies that rate — it changes with the place and the year, and a wrong rate is a wrong deduction. If your preparer gives you one, or last year's statement shows it, type it on Nights away and RefTraq shows the arithmetic; the tax meeting sheet prints it beside the count. The day you leave and the day you come home count at a reduced amount (three-quarters is the usual way), so your preparer may count it differently. For 2021 and 2022 only, the meals part of a per diem could be deducted in full, so a statement for one of those years may read 100%.

Any year is one tap away. Nights away has a Tax year picker over every year you have records for, and each year keeps its own cleared nights and its own rate — tax season is about last year.

A lot of nights in one place raises two questions. When you stay near one other place ten or more nights in a year, Nights away says so, and the tax meeting sheet prints it beside the count. Two things decide whether those nights count at all, and a count cannot answer either: whether that place has become your tax home (then going there is commuting, not travel), and whether the work there is still temporary (a place you keep going back to, season after season, can stop counting as temporary). RefTraq names the questions and decides neither. Your preparer does.

Hotel stays

Yes, RefTraq keeps hotel stays. Add each one as an expense under Lodging, at what it actually cost, with a picture of the receipt if you have it. Quick add reads it too: "hotel in Laribee $110". Lodging goes to Schedule C Line 24a, the travel line, at 100%; meals on the same trip are a separate line at 50%. RefTraq never fills in a hotel you didn't enter, and never uses a per-diem lodging rate, which a self-employed official may not use.

A hotel is deductible only when the trip kept you away overnight on officiating business, and that is your preparer's call. Taxes → Nights away helps: it proposes the nights your schedule says you were probably away, and you keep the ones that are right. A hotel you rent by the month near games is a different question (A place you keep in another town, below).

A place you keep in another town

Needs a record if you rent it. Your preparer's call if you own it.

Some officials work so often in one faraway town that they keep somewhere to sleep there. How it counts depends on whether you rent it or own it.

• If you rent it — a room, an apartment, or the lot a camper or a mobile home sits on — the rent is lodging, the same as a hotel paid by the month instead of by the night. Only your officiating nights count. If the place also gets a weekend away or a family visit, only the officiating share does, and your preparer will want to know how you worked it out.
• If you own it, there is no nightly figure to claim. What might count is the officiating share of what the place costs to keep. Buying it is not an expense at all: it would be written off over years, and that comes back as taxable gain the year you sell. RefTraq will not put a number on this. The review asks when you bought it and what it cost, and prints that for your preparer.

Either way, three questions decide whether any of it counts, and they are your preparer's to answer:

• Has that town become your main place of work? If most of your games and your money are there, trips there start to look like commuting.
• Is it still temporary? A place you keep going back to, season after season, is harder to call "away from home" — and buying one suggests you mean to keep going.
• Does anyone use it for anything else? A mobile home is a home in the tax rules, so a family weekend there changes how it counts.

The evidence for all three is the list of nights you were away, and RefTraq already keeps it.

Your vehicle, beyond the per-mile rate

Solid, and almost nobody claims these.

Two vehicle costs are allowed in addition to the standard mileage rate:

• Interest on the car loan, at your business-use percentage.
• Personal property tax on the vehicle, same share.

If you and your CPA use the actual-expense method instead, the whole picture changes — fuel, insurance, repairs and depreciation come in, and the per-mile rate goes out. The mileage page explains the choice, including the part that matters most: the first year you use a vehicle for business can lock it in.

Study, film and watching the sport

Solid: anything only useful to an official. Your state association's publication, a rules-study service, a video or film platform, a chapter's library, a rulebook app, clinic and camp fees, testing and certification renewals, background checks.

Worth raising with your advisor: the sports media you watch. An official watching a broadcast is watching mechanics, positioning, and how the crew on screen handles what you will handle on Friday. That is study, and you are better at your job for it. RefTraq records these as study material rather than deciding against you in advance.

Be honest about the split where a service is genuinely shared with the household — your advisor will ask, and a sensible business-use percentage is a better answer than all or nothing. That is a conversation to have with them, not one this app should have for you.

Going to watch other officials work

Needs a record.

Traveling to a game as a spectator, to watch the crew and learn from them, is education in your trade and there is a real basis for it. It also looks exactly like going to a ballgame, which is why it draws attention.

What makes the difference is a contemporaneous record: what you went to study, who you watched, what you took away. Write it in the notes on the trip at the time. A deduction you cannot explain two years later is not worth taking.

Fitness

Ask your CPA. Gym memberships are generally not deductible, even for officials, and RefTraq defaults them to 0%. The narrow exception worth raising: where your association requires a fitness test to stay certified, there is a better argument than usual.

The ones that are not expenses at all

These do not belong in your expense list, and for many officials they are worth more than everything above put together. Raise them with whoever prepares your return.

The qualified business income deduction. Up to 20% of your officiating profit, deducted off the top. Most self-employed people with a Schedule C qualify. Most officials have never heard of it. It applies to a profit, though — in a year your officiating runs at a loss there is nothing to take a share of, and that loss carries forward and reduces this deduction in your next profitable year. Worth asking how big the carried figure has got, because it is easy to lose track of across seasons.

A retirement account funded from officiating income. A SEP-IRA or a solo 401(k) lets you shelter a large share of what you made officiating. There are deadlines, which is why this is worth thinking about before you file rather than after.

Self-employed health insurance. If you pay your own premiums, they come off your income directly rather than as a business expense.

A health savings account. If your health plan is a high-deductible one, money you put into an HSA comes off your income, grows untaxed and comes out untaxed for medical costs — and it rolls over rather than expiring. Officials who buy their own cover are often on exactly this kind of plan and never open the account.

Whether an S corporation would ever be worth it. Electing S corporation status means paying yourself a reasonable salary, with only that salary carrying payroll tax. Above a certain profit that saves real money; below it, the payroll, the separate return and the bookkeeping cost more than they save, and most officiating incomes sit below it. So the question is not "should I" but "where is my break-even". An LLC by itself changes nothing about your federal taxes — a single-member LLC is ignored for federal tax unless it makes an election.

What you will hear that does not work for you

Both of these are all over the internet, and each one is real for somebody — just not for a sole proprietor filing a Schedule C, which is how most officials file.

Renting your home to your business (the "Augusta rule"). The claim: rent your house to your business for up to fourteen days a year, the business deducts the rent, and you owe no tax on it. The fourteen-day rule is real, but the deduction half needs a business that is a separate taxpayer paying you rent. As a sole proprietor you are the business — the tenant and the landlord are the same person on the same return, so there is nothing to deduct.

Forming an LLC and having your business rent from it. A single-member LLC is disregarded for federal tax: it is you. Rent your officiating business pays your own LLC lands back on the same return and deducts nothing. And if the business is ever a corporation that employs you, a separate rule stops space you rent to your own employer from counting as a home office — written for exactly this idea.

If your situation really is different — a corporation, a partner — these are worth a question. If it is not, they are one expensive mistake you now do not have to make.

What to do about all this

Log it as it happens. The single reason officials under-claim is not ignorance of the rules — it is that in March nobody remembers what they spent in September. Add the expense on the night, in your own words, and let the category sort itself out.

And once a year, let RefTraq ask you. Taxes has a Deduction review that turns this page into questions, in the same order and grouped the same way. Answer what applies and it files the expense at the right percentage. It never invents an amount: say yes without a number and it asks you for one. The handful of things on this page that cannot honestly be a single expense row — the home office, the vehicle costs, anything big enough to be written off over several years — come out as a page you can print and hand to whoever does your return.

And remember what a default is. Where RefTraq puts 0% on something, that is not RefTraq saying no — it is keeping the record complete while leaving the judgment to the person qualified to make it. Every percentage on this page is editable, because your circumstances are yours.

We are not tax advisors. This page exists so that you walk into that conversation knowing what to ask about, instead of finding out in April that you spent a year not writing things down.

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