Track Schedule C expenses by category — auto-calculates deductions for tax season.
2026 IRS standard mileage rate: 70¢/mile. Meals are 50% deductible. Home office deduction requires dedicated space. This is for estimation only — consult a tax professional.
Every business expense you track lowers your self-employment net income — and that saves both income tax and the 15.3% self-employment tax on top. The IRS lets sole proprietors deduct any "ordinary and necessary" business expense on Schedule C, from rent and software to health-insurance premiums. A few categories have special rules: the 2026 standard mileage rate is 70¢ per business mile, client meals are only 50% deductible, and equipment costing more than $2,500 may be expensed immediately under Section 179 instead of depreciated over years. Grouping expenses by category (as this tool does) keeps tax season simple: your deductible total flows straight onto Schedule C, shrinking net profit and the tax that comes with it.
Sample: a freelance designer's year — $3,600 home office, $6,000 health insurance, $720 phone, $660 software, $450 supplies, 2,000 business miles, and a $200 client dinner.
Priya is a freelance designer in Seattle. Over the year she tracks a home office share of rent, software, phone, supplies, health insurance, business mileage, and a client dinner — each in its own category.
Track self-employed business expenses by IRS Schedule C category. Mileage deduction (70¢/mile), home office. Export for tax filing. Free.
The Freelance Expense Tracker is a category-based log for Schedule C business expenses that turns a list of entries into a tax-ready deduction summary. You add expenses one at a time with a category, description, amount, and date, choosing among fourteen categories: home office, vehicle mileage, office supplies, software and subscriptions, phone and internet, health insurance, retirement (SEP or Solo 401k), education, travel, client meals, advertising, professional fees, equipment over $2,500, and other. The summary panel totals every category with share bars, isolates the home office and mileage deductions, applies the 50% meals limitation automatically, and reports a total deductible figure, all exportable to CSV for your records or preparer.
Freelancers and independent contractors who lose receipts in a shoebox use it to rebuild a defensible category breakdown before filing. Designers, developers, and writers with many small subscriptions (the sample alone includes $659.88 of Adobe Creative Cloud) see where software spend actually lands. Rideshare and delivery drivers log mileage at the 70 cents-per-mile 2026 rate, and self-employed parents capture health premiums and retirement contributions that reduce adjusted gross income. Anyone working from a dedicated home office tracks the deductible portion of rent and utilities. It also fits bookkeepers assembling client data at year-end, and handoff to the freelancer tax estimator is built in. If you operate as a corporation with different deduction rules, Schedule C categories here will not match your return.
(1) Click Add Expense, pick a category (each shows its rule, like the 70 cents-per-mile mileage rate or 50% meals limit), type a description, amount, and date, and confirm. (2) The tracker aggregates entries by category, sorts them by total, and renders each with an item count and its percentage of overall spend as a progress bar. (3) Review the tax summary: total expenses, the home office line, the mileage line, a subtraction for the non-deductible half of client meals, and the resulting total deductible amount. Export everything as CSV, or clear and start fresh; entries can also arrive pre-filled from the invoice extractor tool when you work through the connected freelancer workflow.
The big one is client meals: the tracker automatically removes the non-deductible half from your total deductible figure, reflecting the 50% limitation on business meals, while lodging and flights during business travel stay fully deductible. Vehicle costs are a fork: claim actual expenses, or take the standard mileage rate of 70 cents per mile for 2026, which the mileage category is built around; you cannot mix methods freely in a given year. Home office requires a dedicated, regularly used workspace, and the deduction is limited to the business percentage of rent and utilities. Equipment above $2,500 often cannot be expensed in one shot and may need Section 179 or depreciation instead, which is why that category carries its own warning hint in the form.
All 12 Schedule C categories: advertising, car/truck expenses (standard mileage or actual), commissions and fees, contract labor, depreciation, employee benefit programs, insurance, interest (mortgage/other), legal and professional services, office expenses, rent/lease, repairs/maintenance, supplies, taxes/licenses, travel/meals, and utilities. Home office deduction uses the simplified ($5/sqft, max 300 sqft) or actual method.
The 2026 IRS standard mileage rate for business driving is 70¢ per mile (up from 67¢ in 2024). Log your business miles (client meetings, supply runs, business errands—not commuting from home to your primary workplace). At 70¢/mile, 5,000 business miles = $3,500 in deductions, reducing self-employment tax by ~$537.
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