Discussions

In addition to my normal full-time job, I have a small side contract that I have done for a few years. I have always claimed the income from it on my taxes, but never thought prior to a couple months ago that I should keep track of my expenses related to it and use the eligible ones as deductions. So, about a month ago, I started keeping track of my eligible expenses, along with receipts, even though I've been earning income from it for the whole year.  
 
Does anyone know if I can deduct expenses from just part way through the year (from October to December), or will I only be able to do it for an entire year (ie. start in January 2021 to claim on my 2021 taxes)?  
 
I have always completed by taxes myself, as they are fairly simple, so I don't have a regular accountant I can ask about this. I have also tried searching Google and CRA's website, but have only found out what expenses are eligible, not whether you can claim them for only part of a year.  
 
Thanks in advance for any answers you may have!

You can claim only a few receipts from any time in 2020 for your 2020 taxes or all of them for the entire year.

You can claim for whatever period of the tax year you want...as long as the expense happened in that tax year. And the item(s) you are expensing are is eligible to be claimed ss a business expense.

As long as you can find out what it was, like if you look on a credit card statement from earlier in the year you would know what the amounts were. As long as you knew it was an eligible expense, you wouldn't need a receipt. You need to know exact amounts though. You can't just think "well I spent about $200 for fuel back in april" That would not be ok. If your have receipts, or on your credit card statement numbers adding up to $203.76, that's fine. A certain percentage may be personal miles too, so that needs to be accounted for. (Just using fuel as an example). If you're audited, I don't know if you have to prove receipts. I have had a "charitable audit" done a few years and you do need to prove from whatever organizations that you donated what you say you did. But yes, you can for sure write off what you've kept track of starting in October. It would not make sense that you could only start that at the beginning of the calendar year because most businesses do not start up on January 1st.