| Food and Entertainment or Seminar Expense |
| Meals during a 3 day offshore seminar are not tax deductible. |
A recent court decision emphasises how absurd our tax laws have become. A decision in a recent Amway tax appeal case concerned a range of costs incurred at a convention. Whilst most of the claims were treated in a manner that we may have expected, the food and meals were not ultimately claimable.
The court decided for ?meal entertainment? expenses to be deductible they needed to be consumed at the same time as a session was being conducted. In other words, the speaker has to speak above the din of cutlery and crockery rates and alcohol consumption!!
Can we extend this conclusion to remark that tea and coffee in a ten minute break between a seminar will now also be non-deductible. We would assume not, but mainly because the quantum of the cost is not significant. A cynical view of course, is that it is not the principle that counts, but the tax revenue that may be lost.
The Amway conference was no doubt ?Top Shelf? and Amway were claiming very substantial deductions. Will this lead to a change in attitude by Australian Taxation Office Rulings? Time will tell.
19th-May-2004 |
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