Interesting Tax deductions
Bill Bowden
A junkyard-owning husband and wife routinely sprinkled cat food around
the premises to tempt stray cats into hanging around. Their reason?
The cats "took care of snakes and rats on the property, making the
place safer for customers." Naturally, this attempted deduction did
not pass unchallenged. But when the couple made their case that the
cat food had been instrumental to keeping dangerous rodents away from
their life-sustaining business, the IRS allowed the deduction to
stand.
Ostrich depreciation
Businesses are used to depreciating standard equipment like computers,
truck fleets and buildings. So, an ostrich farmer from Louisiana
submitted a tax return that wrote off the depreciated value of his
ostrich. Odd as it may sound, farmers are indeed allowed by the
Internal Revenue Code to depreciate the value of their livestock
provided they are being used for breeding (rather than producing food
products for sale).