Here’s the thing about write offs. Make sure you’re capturing everything you’re entitled to for allowable expenses which looks like you’re trying to do. Always prepare to defend your expenses in an audit scenario (have receipts, etc.). If you write off the $200 a month to your father, that entails giving him a 1099 from the books of your company and he’ll have to pay taxes on that cash he received, so it might not be something you want to do there. Tool expenses, fuel, insurance, miscellaneous material expenses that weren’t for a particular job but you still had to have on hand anyway, make sure you’re capturing all of that. Things you put on your personal credit card, write up an expense report and reimburse yourself from the company.

You’re most likely on a cash basis for taxes so the IRS is going to essentially be looking at your business account balance on 12/31/23 vs 1/1/23 and that’s the amount it’s going to be looking to tax you on. Now there some advantages to this, don’t deposit checks from customers until January meanwhile you buy and pay for the materials you need before the end of the year. If you’re on accrual basis then it’s a different story.

Don’t do the foolish thing and just spend money because you don’t want to pay taxes. So many companies end up being under funded because they spent cash they had on shit they didn’t need because “it’s a write off”. In the best of times a write off is just a ~20-30% discount on a purchase, you’ll still have more money left over by paying taxes then blowing it on an F-350 because you could.

But again this is just dude on the internet talking here, spend the $1,000 and consult with an accountant who can guide you more accurately for now and in the future.

This is a pretty good write-up on a few different things you can write off plus a few other tax loopholes that can potentially save you some money