Members of the clergy who need to reduce expenses on Schedule C (Form 1040) Profit or Loss From Business and/or Form 2106 Employee Business Expenses (due to a certain percentage of tax-free income received), will need to adjust their allowable expenses in the appropriate section of the Federal Quick Q&A Topics menu after calculating the allowable deductible amount on the worksheets in the program. Then the remaining amount is used as an adjustment to self-employment tax.

On the screen titled Self-Employment Tax - Form 2106 Adjustments, within the Self-employment Tax Adjustments section of the Federal Q&A, are instructions for handling the adjustment for tax-free income received (ex. housing allowance or utilities allowance) for Schedule C or Form 2106. At this point, the TaxAct program will have already used your previous entries regarding the housing/utilities allowance to automatically calculate your percentage of tax-free income on Worksheet 1. You will then be prompted to fill out Worksheet 2 (Schedule C) and/or Worksheet 3 (Form 2106) depending on where your expenses need to be reported.

To access the Schedule SE - Adjustments - Clergy Worksheets in the TaxAct program, go to our Schedule SE - Clergy Self-Employment Tax Adjustment Worksheet FAQ.

The amount of expenses not allowed should then be shown as an adjustment in figuring your self-employment tax. These amounts are allowed as a subtraction for self-employment income/tax purposes only; however, these amounts are not allowed as business expenses (deductible from taxable income) on either Form 2106 or Schedule C. The TaxAct program will automatically calculate this adjustment to self-employment earnings. You will see the following items on the Worksheet 4 titled Figuring Net Self-Employment Income for Schedule SE, Lines 5 and 6:

• Schedule C Expenses Allocable to Tax-Free Income (from Worksheet 2, Line 6)
• Total Unreimbursed Employee Expenses After the 50% Reduction for Meals and Entertainment (from Worksheet 3, Line 9)

Note. The deductible amounts from the worksheets must be manually entered elsewhere in the program as explained below.

The amount of unreimbursed business expenses from Form 2106 and/or business expenses included on Schedule C must be adjusted for the percentage of tax-free income received (ex. housing allowance or utilities allowance). Once the correct amount of allowable deductible expenses is calculated (from the worksheets mentioned above), return to the applicable section within the Federal Quick Q&A Topics menu to make this adjustment:

• Click to expand the Business Income topic within the Federal Quick Q&A Topics menu to adjust the expenses for the ministry reported on Schedule C. Enter the total deductible amount as an Other Expense (Schedule C, Line 27a).
• Click to expand the Itemized or Standard Deductions topic within the Federal Quick Q&A Topics menu, then click Unreimbursed Employee Expenses - Subject to 2% of AGI limit to adjust the expenses for the ministry reported on Form 2106. You can either adjust each expense by the tax-free ratio, or you may enter the total deductible amount as an Other Expense (Form 2106, Line 4, which flows to Line 10).

Note that any link in the information above is updated each year automatically and will take you to the most recent version of the webpage or document at the time it is accessed.