Schedule C Expenses Worksheet: Every Line, With a Free Download

Short answer: A Schedule C expenses worksheet sorts a year of business costs into the lines of Schedule C, Part II: advertising on Line 8, car and truck expenses on Line 9, contract labor on Line 11, supplies on Line 22, and so on through Line 27b for anything else. The total lands on Line 28, comes off your income, and the result on Line 31 drives both income tax and 15.3% self-employment tax. Download the free worksheet below and fill in one row per line.

Download the Schedule C expenses worksheet (CSV) — it opens in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets, with one row for every Part II line and columns for the amount, whether you kept records, and notes.

The IRS does not publish an official expenses worksheet for Schedule C. It publishes the form and the Instructions for Schedule C, which define what belongs on each line. A worksheet is simply that definition turned into something you can fill in while you go through your receipts, so the form itself becomes copying rather than sorting.

What does a Schedule C expenses worksheet cover?

It covers Part II of Schedule C, the expense section, plus the one expense that sits outside it: business use of your home on Line 30. Cost of goods sold, if you sell physical products, is worked out separately in Part III and is not part of this worksheet.

The point of working line by line is that the IRS asks for expenses by category, not as one lump sum. A single “business expenses: $14,000” figure cannot go on the form. Grouping as you go also shows you which categories are empty, which is often where a forgotten deduction is hiding. The full walkthrough of the rest of the form is in Schedule C explained line by line.

Which expenses go on which Schedule C line?

These are the Part II lines on the current form. Line numbers occasionally shift between years, so check the year printed on the form you are filing.

Line	Category	Typical examples for a solo business
8	Advertising	Ads, listings, business cards, website promotion
9	Car and truck expenses	Standard mileage or actual vehicle costs
10	Commissions and fees	Platform fees, referral fees, payment processing fees
11	Contract labor	Independent contractors you paid
13	Depreciation and section 179	Tools, computers, equipment (via Form 4562)
15	Insurance (other than health)	Liability, professional, business property
16b	Interest: other	Business loan and business credit card interest
17	Legal and professional services	Accountant, tax preparer, attorney
18	Office expense	Postage, general office costs
20a / 20b	Rent or lease	Leased equipment and vehicles / office or storage rent
21	Repairs and maintenance	Repairs to business equipment and property
22	Supplies	Materials used up in the work
23	Taxes and licenses	Business licenses, permits, employer payroll tax
24a / 24b	Travel / meals	Overnight business travel / business meals at 50%
25	Utilities	Business share of phone and internet
26	Wages	Pay to employees, never to yourself
27b	Other expenses	Software, subscriptions, bank fees, itemized in Part V
30	Business use of home	Form 8829 or the simplified method

Lines 12, 14, 16a and 19 exist too, covering depletion, employee benefit programs, mortgage interest on business property and employee pension plans. Most one-person service businesses leave them blank, and the downloadable worksheet includes them anyway.

How do you fill out the worksheet from a year of receipts?

Work in one pass per source rather than one pass per line. That way nothing gets counted twice.

1. Start with your business bank and card statements. Tag every outgoing payment with a Schedule C line number. Anything personal gets struck through.
2. Add cash and personal-card purchases from receipts. These are the expenses statements miss and the ones most often lost.
3. Add your mileage log total. Business miles times the rate goes on Line 9, unless you use actual costs.
4. Add home office figures. Square footage for the simplified method, or the Form 8829 figures for the regular method.
5. Total each line and mark the Records column. Any line you cannot back with receipts or a log is a line to fix before filing, not after.

The fifth step matters more than it looks. The IRS expects every deduction to be supported by records showing the amount, the date, the payee and the business purpose. A worksheet built from records you already hold is also a worksheet you can defend.

How do you handle the car and truck line?

Line 9 is the largest line for many trades and field workers, and it has one rule that trips people up: you choose either the standard mileage rate or your actual costs for a vehicle, not both.

• Standard mileage is business miles times the IRS rate, which is 72.5 cents per mile for 2026. Parking and tolls for business trips are added on top.
• Actual costs is the business share of fuel, repairs, insurance, registration and depreciation, set by business miles divided by total miles.

Either way the deduction rests on a mileage log with the date, destination, purpose and distance of each trip. Commuting from home to a regular workplace does not count, which whether your commute is tax deductible covers in detail. Schedule C also asks, in Part IV, when the vehicle was placed in service and how many business, commuting and other miles it drove.

What about the home office and meals lines?

Two lines have their own arithmetic.

Business use of home, Line 30, is not part of the Part II total; it comes off after Line 29. The simplified method allows $5 per square foot of space used regularly and exclusively for business, up to 300 square feet, so a maximum of $1,500. The regular method, on Form 8829, uses the business percentage of real home costs and can be larger, but takes more records.

Deductible meals, Line 24b, is entered at 50% of what you spent on qualifying business meals. Record the full cost in your notes and enter half on the line, so the worksheet shows both.

Which expenses do people most often miss?

The categories that go missing are the small, recurring ones paid from a personal card:

• Software and subscriptions, from accounting and design tools to cloud storage, usually belong on Line 27b and need itemizing in Part V.
• Payment processing fees, which are deducted before the money reaches you and so never appear as a payment you made.
• The business share of your phone and internet, on Line 25.
• Professional memberships and trade subscriptions.
• Small tools and supplies bought with cash.

A broader checklist is in self-employed tax deductions. Each missed $100 of real expense costs roughly $14 in self-employment tax before income tax, because the total on this worksheet reduces the profit that Schedule SE is calculated from.

Why keep the records behind the worksheet?

A worksheet is a summary. If the IRS asks, the summary has to be backed by the receipts, invoices and logs that produced it, and the general guidance is to keep those for at least three years after you file.

That is the part Keel: Invoice Maker & Receipts is designed for. Receipts are photographed and read on device by Apple Intelligence, mileage is logged trip by trip at the 2026 IRS rate, and invoices are created in the same app, all stored encrypted on your iPhone with no account, no bank connection and no cloud. At year end the whole year exports as one file, so filling in this worksheet is a matter of reading totals rather than hunting for paper. The honest tradeoff is that nothing imports automatically from a bank; every entry is one you made. Keel is free with unlimited invoices, receipts and mileage, and Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase. Keel on the App Store.

Frequently asked questions

Does the IRS provide a Schedule C expenses worksheet? No. The IRS publishes Schedule C and its instructions, which define each expense line, but no official worksheet for sorting expenses before you fill in the form. Tax software and preparers use their own. A worksheet like the one here simply lists each Part II line so you can total your records by category before copying the figures onto the form.

Can I put all my expenses on Line 27b as other expenses? No. Line 27b is for costs that do not fit any specific line, and each one must be itemized with a description in Part V. Expenses that have their own line, such as advertising, supplies, insurance or utilities, belong on that line. Lumping them into other expenses makes the return harder to read and can draw questions that correct categorization would avoid.

Where do I put software subscriptions on Schedule C? Most software subscriptions go on Line 27b, other expenses, listed in Part V with a short description such as “accounting software” or “design software.” Some preparers place them under office expense on Line 18 instead. What matters more than the line is consistency from year to year and a receipt or invoice for each charge.

How do I record mileage on the worksheet? Enter the business miles from your mileage log times the IRS standard rate, 72.5 cents per mile for 2026, on Line 9, and add business parking and tolls. If you use actual costs instead, enter the business percentage of vehicle expenses. Either way, keep the log itself, because Schedule C also asks for your business, commuting and other miles in Part IV.

What records do I need for each worksheet line? For each expense, keep something showing the amount, the date, who you paid and the business purpose: a receipt, an invoice, a bank or card statement with a note, or a mileage log entry. Keep those records for at least three years after filing. A worksheet total you cannot trace back to records is a deduction you may not be able to defend.

Does the worksheet total reduce self-employment tax? Yes. The expenses total reduces your Schedule C net profit on Line 31, and that net profit is what Schedule SE uses to calculate 15.3% self-employment tax. It also lowers your income tax. That is why a complete worksheet usually saves more than people expect, because each real expense counts twice.

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This article is general information, not tax advice. Consult a qualified tax professional.