I find myself with a couple of deadbeat customers. I had just chalked it up as a loss in my head but then someone suggested there might be some tax benefits that I could gain by reporting this loss of income. I have read that in most cases a cash business can't claim the loss of non-payment of invoices for services rendered. This is most of my claim. I invoiced them and they did not pay. So am I correct that I can't claim this as a loss? One company has filed bankruptcy the other is out of money and about to go out of business.

Now what about expenses. While with this company I used my personal credit card and filed expense reports with the expectation of reimbursements for those expenses. They did not pay that either. Can I file these as a loss? If so how?

To complicate matters the expenses were in a prior year.

Any direction would be helpful. Thanks