Scan it where you are
The frame finds the edges and captures when steady. Apple's Vision framework reads the total, the date, the merchant, the sales tax and the tip on the phone itself, so a basement with no signal is fine.
iPhone. Coming soon.
Your expense categories should be Schedule C line numbers
Most receipt apps file your paper under Groceries, Shopping or Personal. None of those words exist on a tax form. DeductHound files it under Supplies, line 22, because line 22 is the box you are going to copy it into.
79.99 a year or 12.99 a week. No free trial. DeductHound records what you enter and totals it by line. It does not decide what counts as a business expense, and the section below says exactly where that stops.
Part II, Expenses
The eight categories, and the line each one lands on
Part II is a numbered list of boxes, and if you file a Schedule C, that list is where your working year ends up. So the categories in the app are that list, with the number sitting under the name.
| Category in the app | Schedule C line | The kind of paper that lands here |
|---|---|---|
| Advertising | Line 8 | Business cards, a printed sign, ads you pay for online. |
| Car and truck expenses | Line 9 | What running a vehicle for work costs, entered by hand. No GPS. No battery drain. |
| Contract labor | Line 11 | People you pay who are not employees, the ones a 1099-NEC describes. |
| Office expense | Line 18 | Paper, ink, postage, the small things a desk eats. |
| Supplies | Line 22 | Materials you buy and use up doing the work itself. |
| Travel | Line 24a | Flights, hotels, nights spent away from home for the job. |
| Deductible meals | Line 24b | Its own category here because it is its own line there. |
| Utilities | Line 25 | Power, water, the phone and the internet the work runs on. |
Every number in that middle column comes straight out of Part II of the official Instructions for Schedule C (Form 1040). We did not build a taxonomy and map it onto the form afterwards. We took the form. What the schedule is and who files one is described on About Schedule C (Form 1040).
Travel and meals are two categories here for one reason: they are two lines there, 24a and 24b, and they have never been the same box. What belongs in each is set out in Publication 463, not in a dropdown somebody designed.
The number then travels with the expense: under the category name on the confirmation screen, in its own CSV column, at the head of each PDF group. Filling in Part II becomes reading down a column instead of rebuilding a year from memory.
The honest part
Sorting is not the same as deciding
This is where the rest of the category goes quiet, so here it is flat. The app puts each expense in the box you pick, and has no opinion about whether it belongs on the form at all.
You pick the line, every single time
On the confirmation screen the category is a field like the other five, sitting next to the photograph it came from. Nothing is filed behind your back and nothing is relabeled later.
No rule engine, no verdict
There is no model here ruling that a dinner was business. Whether a cost is ordinary and necessary for your business is your call, and your tax professional's.
The paper stays with the number
The IRS line on recordkeeping is that you keep whatever supports the figure. Every scan keeps its image attached, so the PDF carries the receipt next to the amount.
Totals, not promises
What you get back is the sum of what you entered, per line, for the range you asked for. No refund estimate is attached to it and no outcome is promised anywhere.
Paper to box
What this looks like on an ordinary Tuesday
You are at a counter with a receipt you will never think about again. Three steps, and it is already on the right line.
Check five fields, pick the line
Everything is editable next to the photograph it was read from. If no total is found the field is left empty and focused instead of guessed at, and the category picker shows the line under each name.
Export with the number attached
A CSV your spreadsheet opens and a PDF with the receipt images, both grouped by category and both carrying the line, by quarter, year or any range you pick.
A backlog goes in the same way. Batch import takes the receipts already in your camera roll, runs them in one pass and stacks them in a confirmation queue. If some of that paper is already gone, the guide on being audited with no receipts is a better read than any feature list.
The scanning half has its own page, the receipt scanner for taxes, and the year-round view of the same data lives on the expense tracker for the self-employed. Pricing and screenshots are on the DeductHound home page.
Line 22 only means something once you know what the year owes
The free calculator works out the 15.3% self-employment tax on your net profit for 2026, splits it across the four estimated tax dates and estimates how the expense total you enter moves the bill. It runs in your browser, with no email address and no account, and the deadline side of it is covered on quarterly taxes for 1099 workers.
Questions
What people ask before the categories make sense
Where do these line numbers come from?
From Part II of the Instructions for Schedule C (Form 1040), published by the IRS. Advertising is line 8, car and truck expenses line 9, contract labor line 11, office expense line 18, supplies line 22, travel line 24a, deductible meals line 24b and utilities line 25. DeductHound renumbers nothing and invents no category of its own.
What if an expense does not fit any of the eight categories?
Then it does not belong in one of the eight. Part II has more lines than that, including line 27a for other expenses, and the official Instructions for Schedule C (Form 1040) list them all.
DeductHound ships the eight boxes a one-person business fills most weeks. Where anything else belongs is a question for your tax professional, not a category we made up.
Does the app decide whether something is deductible?
No. It reads the paper, keeps the photograph attached and totals what you entered, per line, for the range you pick.
Whether a cost is ordinary and necessary for your business is your call and your tax professional's. There is no rule engine here handing down a verdict on your lunch.
Does the line number really make it into the export?
Yes, in both. The CSV carries a column with the Schedule C line next to every amount, and the PDF groups receipts by category with the line in the heading and the image beside the total.
Export by quarter, year or any date range. The point of all of it is that Part II turns into a copying job.
Do I need a bank connection or an account to use it?
Neither. No Plaid connection, no transaction import, no reconciliation, so nothing here asks for your banking credentials. No sign-up and no password either.
Entries live on your iPhone and sync to your own private iCloud under your own Apple Account, and scanning works in airplane mode. The same holds on the tax write-off tracker side of the app.
One email, the day it opens
No newsletter, no drip sequence, no discount codes. A single message when DeductHound is on the App Store, and that is the end of it.
DeductHound is not tax advice. It records and totals the expenses you enter and prints the Schedule C line you chose for each one. What is deductible for your business, which line it truly belongs on and what you owe are questions for a tax professional. See the Terms of Use.
Where this comes from
Sources
- The Part II line behind every category in the table. Instructions for Schedule C (Form 1040), IRS
- What Schedule C is and who files one. About Schedule C (Form 1040), IRS
- What belongs in travel, line 24a, and in meals, line 24b. Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses, IRS
- That an expense has to be ordinary and necessary, and supported. What kind of records should I keep, IRS
- Why the receipt image stays attached to the entry. Recordkeeping, IRS
- The 15.3% self-employment tax rate used by the calculator. Self-Employment Tax (Social Security and Medicare Taxes), IRS
- The four estimated tax payment dates for the 2026 tax year. Form 1040-ES (2026), IRS