Admit it: Your wife helps you run your
business. I know because I've been
there. For years, I answered the phone for
my husband's carpentry business, kept
the books, typed the estimates, and
scheduled the subs. I even went to the
lumberyard to pick up materials and to
the site to pick up trash.
These are all tasks that you could do
yourself, but that would leave you less
time to bang nails or sell new jobs. The
other alternative is to hire someone to
perform this kind of work. In that case,
you could deduct that person's salary
and working expenses, which would
reduce your taxable profit. But it would
also increase your overhead, which