Hacker News Reader

Agree with this. Unless you're frequently traveling for business or making big work-related purchases, I'm finding it hard to believe that you could provide a compelling argument to the IRS that you have $13k in expenses. "Meals" is not a deductible expense, that's a personal expense and the IRS will nail you for it.

View on HN

I guess that depends on the country.

I live in NL and (I checked with my accountant), I can deduct the cost of coffee I get at the cafe where I work, provided that I drink it while working.

In the UK, it's along the lines of you can only expense food and drink if it's an expense that occurs while traveling away from your normal place of work for business purposes.

Without travel expenses, purchasing lots of hardware or online service costs for running a project, I'd be interested in what people are expensing if their expenses are above say £5K a year.

actually you can deduct meals. not sure for sole-proprietorships, but corporations and llc's most certainly can. (in the USA).

However in case you get audited, make sure you keep reciepts (not just record of payment) and can justify it as being a food-while-working or bizdev expense.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com