Education & Taxes:

Job Related Training Courses

Anytime you take an educational course that might help you with your work or trade you might be able to write it off as a business expense.

Following are requirements for eligibility for these deductions:

• You need to already be part of the working community. You can't be going to college to get your education to learn a trade for the first time right out of high school.
• It must be in some way beneficial to your trade or sanctioned by your employer to better or keep your job.
• The course can't be a minimum requirement for your job. You can't take basic computer programming courses while working as a computer programmer and write those off as business expenses.
• You can't take courses that prepare you for a new profession even though they might be closely related. For example, if you are a plumber and you take a course on how to work as an electrician, that course is not tax deductible. Even though you might be able to become more versatile in your occupation.
  

The only thing you have to be careful about when dealing with this tax deduction is that you are walking a fine line with the IRS. The IRS looks at these deductions with extreme scrutiny. The courses have to be directly related to your profession and should not be part of the minimum requirements for your job.