Taxes — what the numbers mean
First, the disclaimer that is also the philosophy: RefTraq is record-keeping, not tax advice. The app's job is to capture everything cleanly and conservatively so that you — or your CPA — decide with complete records instead of a shoebox.
The Taxes tab, decoded
Which year. From January 1 through April 15 the Taxes tab opens on the year just finished, because that is the one you are filing; the rest of the year it opens on this one. Tax year at the top offers this year, last year and every earlier year you have a game, a drive or an expense in, so an imported 2019 opens like any other year. The tax meeting sheet follows the year you were looking at, and the other tax screens with a Tax year switch offer the same years. The Deduction Review keeps to this year and last, because each answer becomes an expense and Track lists this year and last; opened from an earlier year, it says so. For a year before 2016, the first year RefTraq has IRS mileage rates for, Taxes says that the year's drives carry the fallback rate (your Settings rate, else 72.5¢ a mile) rather than that year's own.
Drives saved at an old rate. A drive keeps the IRS rate it was saved with. When some were saved before RefTraq had the rate for their day (a midyear change, or a new year's rate published after you logged January), Taxes names them and the difference, with Re-price them: two taps, and each gets the IRS rate for its day. Rides as a passenger are never re-priced. Only the year you are filing and later are checked; a year already filed shows nothing. The Mileage page says more.
Before you hand this year over. When something in the year is still open, Taxes lists it in a card just above the export buttons, one line and one button each: games played with no payment recorded, games paid only part of their fee, games with no fee set, game days with no drive in your mileage log, payers nobody has said send a 1099 or not, 1099s you expect that are not entered yet, hidden games with money recorded (hidden games are left out of every figure), and deleted games with money recorded, whose button opens the Schedule's Deleted view for that year, where Undelete puts a game back with its money. The card shows counts, never dollar figures, and is not there when nothing is open. When RefTraq couldn't check, the card says so with Try again, so a failed check never looks like a year with nothing open. The tax meeting sheet's "Raise these" list says the same counts.
- Income received — cash basis: money that actually landed this year, counted in the year it arrived. A December game paid in January is next year's income — and next year's 1099 — so it moves to next year here too, and the screen says so beside the total. A payment with no date at all (common in imported history) stays with its game's year, because that is the only evidence there is. A game paid in parts counts each payment in the year it arrived: $95 in December and $30 in January are $95 this year and $30 next. Estimates never leak into this number.
- Mileage deduction — logged business miles × the IRS rate in effect on the day of each trip, not a single rate for the year (driver-only, per the rules in the Mileage guide). If your own total looks off by a little, this is usually why: 2026 changed mid-year, from 72.5¢ to 76¢ on July 1.
- Expense deductions — each expense category carries a conservative default deductible percentage. You can override per expense; the defaults are the cautious reading.
- Net profit — received minus deductions: the number self-employment tax applies to.
- Est. SE tax / Est. savings — ballpark figures so you're not surprised in April. Estimates, clearly labeled, never filed anywhere. Self-employment tax is $0 until net profit × 92.35% reaches $400 (about $434 of profit), the line where Schedule SE starts.
The conservative defaults, and why
- Meals: 50%, and only with the sleep-or-rest rule in mind. Meals on a normal day-trip game are generally NOT deductible — the IRS ties travel meals to trips long enough to require sleep or rest. Capture them anyway (capture everything, decide with the CPA later), but the default posture assumes the strict reading.
- Gym / fitness: 0% by default. Courts have almost always disallowed general fitness costs, even for officials. If your CPA disagrees for your situation, override it.
- Per diem received is income, not a deduction trigger. If a chapter pays you meal money, that's reimbursement income — it doesn't make the meal deductible.
- Uniforms, dues, registrations, clinics, gear: 100%. Unambiguously business.
These defaults were argued about, once, properly — and then locked. The app won't loosen them quietly, and neither should you without a professional in the loop.
Your 1099s are already inside your income
This is the mistake that is easiest to make and most expensive to get wrong. When several schools' games are settled through one payment processor, the processor sends you one 1099 for all of them — not one per school. RefTraq, meanwhile, records every game by the school that assigned it. So if you add up your games and then add your 1099s on top, you count the same money twice.
The money you received is your income, counted once. Every 1099 is a slice of that total, never an addition to it. Hand the forms over as proof of the total, not as extra lines.
Taxes → Who pays you is where you tell RefTraq how the money actually reaches you:
- Who pays you through somebody else. A chapter that assigns your games but whose money is settled by a processor points at that processor — so its games land under the processor's form.
- Whether a form comes, and which kind. A 1099-NEC is a payer reporting what it paid you; a 1099-K is a payment platform reporting what it settled. "Not sure yet" is a real answer and is kept apart — RefTraq never reads it as "no form".
- The exception, on one game. A school that assigns through the chapter but hands you its own check at the field is not the processor's income. Open that game and set Who paid this game. Nothing you already recorded is changed, and nothing is guessed onto old games.
The screen then shows the year's money in columns — should be on a 1099, on no form, nobody has said yet — and the columns always add up to exactly what arrived. It is not a choice about what to report: every column is income. It is there so you can check the envelopes that arrive against what you actually earned, and answer the question a preparer always asks: how much came in that will not be on any 1099?
If an assigner routes its money through a processor and both of them send you a form, RefTraq says so. The same money may then be on two documents. It does not take anything off — which form is the duplicate is a question for whoever prepares your return — but it points at the arrangement before the envelopes arrive.
When the forms arrive
Enter each 1099 on Who pays you as it comes, under the year printed on it: who sent it, which form, and the amount — box 1 on a 1099-NEC, box 1a on a 1099-K. RefTraq lays it against the money you recorded from that payer in that year and says one of five things:
| What it says | What it means |
|---|---|
| Matches | The form and your records agree to the cent. |
| Form is higher | The form reports more than you recorded. Usually a payment nobody logged. On a 1099-K it is often the platform reporting the total before its own fees came off — and those fees are an expense worth recording. |
| Form is lower | The form reports less. Usually a payment dated in the other year, or money that reached you some other way. |
| May be counted twice | The form is from an assigner your list says pays you through somebody else, so that money is already on the other payer's form. |
| Nothing recorded from them | RefTraq has no money from that name in that year — the name does not match your list, or the money was never logged. |
The turn of the year is the commonest honest gap. RefTraq counts money in the year it reached you. A payer counts it in the year they paid it, and a check written on December 30 can arrive on January 4. When one payment near New Year would close the gap exactly, RefTraq names it. Which year it belongs in is a question for whoever prepares your return.
Nothing is ever changed to make a form agree. A gap is a question, and the games behind RefTraq's figure are listed with it so you can check them one by one. If all the forms together add up to more than everything you received, RefTraq says so plainly: either some money was never logged, or one form covers money another form already reports.
A payer you said sends a form, with money recorded and no form entered yet, waits under Still to come — so you know which envelopes are still out.
The forms go on paper too. The tax meeting sheet lists each one straight under your income total, with its check read out beside it, and says in so many words that every form listed there is already inside that total — hand them over as proof of it, not as additions to it. The same page gives the figure a preparer always asks for by name: how much was received on no 1099. The Schedule C export puts the same sentence beside Line 1 and lists the forms in a section of their own, deliberately apart from the summary's amount column — that column is what tax software adds up, and a form's amount in it would be the double-count itself. That section also lists every payer the year's money came from, with what it paid, how many games, which assigners it covered and the form you expect from it, and those rows add up exactly to the totals under them.
The same number, two years running
The tax meeting sheet shows last year's figure under every line, so you can see at a glance what went up and what went down. While this year is still going, most lines will read lower than last year's — that is expected. The line worth a look is one that already matches.
When a line built from your own records comes out exactly where it did last year — an expense category to the cent, or your business miles to the tenth of a mile — the sheet says so, and raises it as a question to take into the meeting. That is often completely right: a phone bill or an annual registration at the same price really does come to the same figure. But a figure that repeats to the dollar is also what an estimate carried over from last year looks like, and "how did you work that out?" is the question a preparer would ask. If it was carried over, add it up from this year's records before the meeting.
Nothing is changed and nothing is called wrong. No figure moves, and income is never flagged — it adds up payments somebody else made — and neither is the number of nights away, because two ordinary seasons can easily have the same count. Your first year in RefTraq has no last year to compare with, so the column simply is not there.
Schedule C export
One button produces a CSV organized by Schedule C line: a summary with each expense category and its line (meals to 24b, lodging and fares to 24a, supplies to 22, insurance to 15, internet to 25, a storage unit to 20b, assignor and chapter fees to 10, office supplies to 18, tax preparation to 17, advertising to 8, and so on; anything without a line of its own is itemized under 27a), then the same deductions added up by line in form order, which is the place to see exactly what lands on each line (Line 9 is your mileage at the IRS rate plus parking and tolls under the standard method; under the actual method it is parking and tolls only, and it says the car is not in it. The car's own costs you logged (gas, maintenance, cleaning, vehicle insurance, registration and fees) are in no total under either method: the export lists them apart as car costs on record for your preparer), then income detail, the mileage log in IRS format and every expense. The income detail ends with two columns: the assigning group on each game, and paid by, who your money came from as Who pays you works it out (blank for a game nobody has paid yet, or when nobody is named). The expense list ends with a receipt column that says "yes" when you kept a picture of the receipt in RefTraq; the picture itself stays in RefTraq and is not in the file. New columns go at the end, so a spreadsheet your preparer built around last year's file still lines up. The by-line block is the same money as the summary, so it is never added to it, and its lines add up to Total deductions. Home office costs get their own block, outside the total and net profit, and the Taxes tab shows them on their own line, left out of its total, net profit and savings: they go on Form 8829 or the simplified method, which is your preparer's figure. Hand the file to your CPA or accountant — or your tax software — and you're done being the shoebox.