Deductions Content Creators Should Claim: What Counts as "Ordinary and Necessary" for Your Niche
Before we get into the specifics, let's make sure we're all on the same page about what a write-off actually is, since the term gets thrown around a lot without much explanation. A write-off, or a deduction, is simply a business expense you get to subtract from your income before the IRS calculates how much tax you owe. If you made $80,000 this year but spent $10,000 on legitimate business expenses, you're only taxed on $70,000, not the full $80,000. That's it, that's the whole concept. The complicated part isn't the math, it's figuring out which expenses actually qualify as legitimate business costs in the first place, and that's exactly what this post is about.
If you want the full rundown of common deductions by category before diving into the nuance below, grab our free Content Creator Tax Write-Off Guide below, it breaks things down by content type and gives you a real starting point instead of a generic list.
Now, here's something that surprises a lot of creators when they hear it for the first time. The rule that decides whether an expense is deductible wasn't written with you in mind at all, because it wasn't written with anyone remotely like you in mind. The core standard the IRS uses, that a business expense has to be "ordinary and necessary," last went through a major overhaul back in 1986, decades before anyone had ever heard of a career being an influencer, streamer, or content creator. Back then, this was a standard built for law firms, manufacturers, and mom-and-pop retail shops, not someone building a business around a ring light and a camera.
And here's the part that actually works in your favor: That phrase, “ordinary and necessary”, was written broadly on purpose. Lawmakers couldn't possibly anticipate every industry that would eventually exist, so instead of listing out specific approved expenses for every profession under the sun, they built a flexible standard that could stretch to fit whatever business someone was actually running, whenever they were running it. That's exactly why an entire industry that didn't exist forty years ago can still find a home inside a rule that old. The gray area isn't a flaw, it's the point!
What "Ordinary and Necessary" Actually Means
Let's break down the phrase itself, because it's doing a lot of work. "Ordinary" means the expense is common and accepted in your specific type of business, not that everyone in the world would recognize it as normal. "Necessary" means it's helpful and appropriate for your business, not that it's absolutely required for you to survive. Put together, the standard is really asking one question: does this expense make sense for the specific business you're running?
That word "specific" is the entire ballgame here, and it's the piece most generic tax advice glosses right over. The standard isn't asking whether an expense is ordinary and necessary for businesses in general, it's asking whether it's ordinary and necessary for your business, in your niche, doing what you actually do. Which means the exact same purchase can be a completely legitimate write-off for one creator and a total non-starter for another, and neither one of them is wrong.
The Overlaps That Apply No Matter What You Create
Before we get into how different niches diverge, it's worth pointing out that plenty of expenses clear the ordinary and necessary bar for almost every creator, regardless of what you actually make content about. Lighting, editing software, cameras and microphones, and contractors who help you produce your content, editors, thumbnail designers, virtual assistants, etc. are about as close to universal as creator deductions get. Every creator, whether they're gaming, baking, doing fashion hauls, or filming outdoor survival content, is running a production operation underneath their niche, and the tools that make that production possible tend to be ordinary and necessary across the board. Those are usually the easy, no-brainer deductions. It's everything past that baseline where your specific niche starts to matter.
Why Your Niche Changes Everything
Think about two creators making a similar amount of money, posting on similar platforms, with similarly sized audiences. One is a gaming creator, the other bakes and posts recipe content. Their businesses look nothing alike once you get past the surface, and their deductions shouldn't look alike either.
A gaming creator buying a new console, the latest release of a game, or an upgraded graphics card has an easy, obvious case, since that gear is quite literally the content. Nobody's questioning why a gaming channel needs games. That same logic extends to competitive gear too, things like a mechanical keyboard, a specific headset used for competitive play, or even tournament entry fees if they're building content around competing.
A baking or food creator's deductible world looks completely different. Their write-offs are going to lean toward ingredients purchased specifically for a recipe video, specialty baking equipment used on camera, props and backdrops for styling a shot, and maybe even a portion of a kitchen makeover if it's genuinely built out as a dedicated content space rather than just where the family eats dinner. A gaming console might raise real questions on a food creator's return, the same way a stand mixer would raise questions on a gaming channel's tax return, because neither purchase is really ordinary or necessary for that specific type of content.
Push it further into outdoor, hiking, or survivalist content, and the picture shifts again entirely. Now you're looking at specialized gear like tents, boots, and cold-weather clothing, travel costs to remote filming locations that would never come up for a creator filming from a bedroom setup, and maybe even guide or permit fees for accessing certain trails or terrain. None of that overlaps meaningfully with either of the other two niches, and that's exactly the point.
What Happens When You're Not Just One Niche
Here's where it gets genuinely interesting, and where a lot of creators don't fit neatly into the examples above at all. Plenty of creators aren't locked into a single lane. Maybe you started as a gaming channel and have since branched into IRL content, or your baking channel occasionally features a home renovation series, or you post both fashion hauls and gaming setups because that's honestly just what your life and your audience actually look like. In cases like that, the deductions genuinely can overlap, and there's nothing wrong or aggressive about that. A creator who makes both gaming content and food content might legitimately deduct a new console for one type of video and specialty cooking appliances for another, because both are ordinary and necessary for the different, but equally real, sides of their content business. The test doesn't punish you for having range, it just asks that each expense connect back to content you're actually creating, whichever category that content falls into.
Why Generic Accounting Advice Only Gets You So Far
This is exactly why a flat, one-size-fits-all list floating around the internet, the kind that just says every creator can write off a phone, a laptop, and "content supplies" with no further explanation, ends up being either too vague to be useful or flat out wrong depending on who's reading it. That kind of generic advice comes from a general accounting perspective, not a creator-specific one, so it has no way to tell a gaming creator that their console is a slam dunk while quietly telling a beauty creator that the same purchase would be a stretch. It just wasn't built with your kind of business in mind at all.
Our own Content Creator Tax Write-Off Guide is a solid place to start instead, since it's built specifically around creator businesses rather than adapted from generic small-business advice, giving you a real foundation of common categories and examples pulled from how creators actually spend and earn. But even a strong starting point still has limits, since no single guide can account for every niche and every creator's exact setup. The honest, useful version of this conversation always comes back to one question: what does your content actually require you to buy, use, or do? Once you can answer that clearly for your own channel, the ordinary and necessary test gets a lot easier to apply, because you're testing purchases against your actual business instead of against generic advice that was never built for creators in the first place.
How to Actually Apply This to Your Own Deductions
A helpful way to think through any purchase is asking yourself two honest questions. First, would this expense make sense to another creator in my exact niche, doing what I do?
Documentation matters here too, maybe more than people realize. Since the standard is genuinely gray and niche-dependent, being able to show how a purchase connects to your content, through the video it appears in, the caption referencing it, an affiliate link collecting commissions from it, or even just a note explaining the business purpose, is what makes a deduction defensible if it's ever questioned. The purchase being ordinary and necessary in theory doesn't help much if you can't demonstrate that connection later.
Why This Is Exactly Where a Creator-First CPA Earns Their Keep
This is also exactly why working with a general accountant so often falls short for creators, and why a firm that actually specializes in this space makes such a real difference. It's not enough for a CPA to understand the tax code in general, they need to understand you specifically, what your content looks like, what your niche actually requires, and how your business has evolved or branched out over time. A creator-first firm takes the time to actually get to know your content and your channel, not just your income numbers, which is what makes it possible to apply a forty-year-old standard accurately to a business model that didn't exist when the standard was written. That relationship is what turns "it depends" from a frustrating non-answer into an actual, defensible answer built around your specific business.
Why "It Depends" Is the Right Answer, Not a Frustrating One
If you've ever asked a general accountant about a creator-specific expense and gotten a wishy-washy answer, it's usually not because they're trying to dodge the question, it's because they genuinely don't have enough context about your specific niche to give you a confident yes or no. That's not a failure of the tax code, it's the tax code working exactly as intended. A standard flexible enough to cover a law firm in 1986 and a Twitch channel in 2026 has to leave room for real judgment, and that judgment has to be applied niche by niche, creator by creator, not off a one-size-fits-all list.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is the deduction standard so vague for creators specifically?
The "ordinary and necessary" standard was written broadly for every kind of business, and it hasn't been rewritten to specifically address content creation, which means it's up to each creator to apply that broad standard to their own niche rather than following a specific list built for their industry, since no such list exists in the tax code itself.
Are there any deductions that apply to basically every creator regardless of niche?
Yes! Things like cameras, lighting, editing software, and contractors who help produce your content tend to be ordinary and necessary across almost every niche, since every creator is running some form of production operation underneath their specific content category.
Can two creators in different niches deduct completely different things even with similar income?
Yes, and that's expected. The standard isn't based on income level, it's based on whether the expense fits the specific business being run, so a gaming creator and a food creator earning the same amount can have almost entirely different deductible expenses.
What if my content spans more than one niche?
That's genuinely common, and it doesn't break the standard, it just means you're applying it across more than one category of content. A creator who makes both gaming and food content can generally deduct expenses tied to each, as long as every expense still connects back to content they're actually producing.
What's the safest way to decide if something is deductible for my niche?
Talk to an accountant who understands your content! If you don’t have access to one, ask yourself whether the expense would make sense to another creator doing exactly what you do, and whether it genuinely shows up in or supports your content, then document that connection clearly in case it's ever questioned later.
Is it possible to be too conservative and miss deductions I'm actually entitled to?
Absolutely, and it happens far too often. Creators who don't understand how the ordinary and necessary standard applies to their specific niche sometimes assume something isn't deductible just because it's not on a generic list, when it would actually hold up perfectly well given what their content actually requires.
Still Not Sure What Applies to You?
The ordinary and necessary standard depends entirely on your specific niche and content, which means a generic answer isn't really an answer at all. Book a free call with Game On Financial and we'll get to know your content the way a creator-first firm should, so you know exactly what applies to you, not what applies to creators in general.
