50% meals and entertainment, or office expense?

Question

Each week the shareholders of a small corporation have a lunch meeting to discuss business. Is the lunch 50% deductible meals and entertainment, or 100% deductible office expense? This type of situation always gets me confused.

Answer 1

It woudl be fairly easy to justify this as a 100% office expense.  Even if they argue that you could meet without food (which is true), the fee for renting office space is bound to be even higher.

As long as they're not dining at a 5-star restaurant each week, I don't foresee many (if any) issues.

Answer 2

I would think it's a 100% deductible office expense.

since you could argue that the meeting is necessary for the corporation to run correctly, and there's no way around it.

I hope this helps you! :-)

Answer 3

This would not be Meals and Entertainment. That is when you are away from your tax home overnight or entertaining clients. It would not be an Office Expense either. That is for expenses for running the office. I would list them as a miscelaneous expense (or Other Expense) and call it Meeting Expense.

Office Expenses are expenses to run your office. This includes office supplies, postage, delivery expense,etc.

Since the meeting is for shareholders to discuss the business, it cannot really be an Office Expense because it is not directly related to the running of the office.

Answer 4

meals & entertainment, 50%

office expense is supplies, paper clips, paper, etc.

-Think of it this way, if they met in a conference room to discuss business without food, it wouldn't cost anything. the food=the expense="meal"