I’ve seen the advice to pre-pay your business expenses before the end of the month — and the end of the year — in order to cash in on as many deductions as possible. So far, I’ve seen advice to pre-pay for web hosting and domain renewal, January mortgage payments and pretty much any purchase you might expect to make. It’s true that any deductible expenses paid before the end of 2008 can be written off on your tax return for the year.

But there’s a drawback that all of this advice doesn’t take into account. If you write off an expense this year, you can’t write it off next year. Sure, your reoccuring expenses will be eligible for deductions next year, but any one-time purchase won’t. If you expect to owe more taxes next year, it might just make sense to wait until after the new year to make some of those purchases.

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