Has anyone considered, or have purchased 2 of the same items and marked one "DC" and used it soley for the DC? I am considering this, because I'm thinking it would make things much easier to figure out. Of course I dont know if it would work that way or not, but in theory, it seems like it would work. Like I could kleenex, clorox wipes, dish dertegent, paper towels, and keep them in a small tote and leave it in the kitchen, and when I'm open I just use these items in the tote, instead of the ones under the sink, where everything is kept now anyway, butu just make the stuff under the sink the personnal only, that way, when I bought a roll of paper towels, I could throw it in the DC tote, and write it off 100%, without trying to figure all this stuff out which is driving me CRAZY because I never wrote stuff off before....Now I know why I didn't! Too much work, and too confusing! Would that be a red flag though to the IRS? Or would this be a really good idea?

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I think it would work fine........But I personally find it easier to just stick to the time space%..........I find using the minute menu software throughout the year is the best way of keeping track of everything, including my time/space percentage....since it has a spot, where you can keep track of all the additional time you spend on daycare when children are not present, so every morning before the kids get here, and I'm preparing stuff for breakfast and lunch, I mark down an additional 30 minutes, every night when they leave and I clean up the rest of the daycare mess, and clean toys, I mark down an extra hour or whatever, If a parent lags behind for twenty minutes, I mark their kid here an extra 20 minutes, and it calculates my time/space for me. It makes taxes so much easier, every time, I buy stuff, I record it in the expenses right away, and then stash the reciept, and then I never have to touch those reciepts again, just keep them in a box. I also record all parents payments, and you can even print out W10 forms for parents at the end of year. This is a great program, even if your not on the food program I believe you can purchase it, which would be a 100% write off, Anyways, I highly recommend it!

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I have MMK and thats why I am asking all these questions! I need to know how to figure all this stuff out. Its so over welming when you are new to it!

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I list most of my stuff as t/s in MMK but there are some things I do keep seperated and marked as such in my house. The main things for me are stamps and printer ink. I have two printers, one for personal and one for business only. They use different inks so it's easy to keep them seperated. I have a property of kid kair stamp that I use on things that are solely for kid kair use so that we never use them for personal use. I don't do this for paper towels, tissues, cleaning stuff, etc cause I think it would be a pain to keep them seperated since we don't use them much during or outside of business hours. I heard once from a tax perparer that if you want to really keep things seperated you should buy things that look differently for business vs personal. For example white papertowels for personal and blue for business. That way you are less likely to confuse the two.

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One suggestion- if you were to do it that way, make sure that you still keep your receipts from the personal use supplies. In case you get audited, you'd have to make sure that you could prove that you bought some of that stuff for your own personal use as well. Have you read Tom's Record Keeping Guide? I just got it as an e-book and IT MAKES THINGS SO EASY TO UNDERSTAND! Here's a link in case you're interested.

http://iactive.pdn.ipublishcentral.c...g-guide-8th-ed

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Nobody said record keeping was easy! You can certainly buy two of the items you mention and use one 100% for business and the other 100% personal. The main thing would be to follow through and use each item as you intended. Also, make sure you save receipts for the items used 100% personally! That way, if audited you will be able to show that you didn't try to deduct 100% of all of your paper towels, etc.

If you find that this is easy for you to do than to add up all receipts and multiply by your time-space percentage, then go ahead. Either way works.

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