Hi Lee Phillips with Ben Rucker and we're casual today because we're traveling. The topic is
how to deduct your meals Ben's a former IRS special auditor special dude and I'm an
attorney so don't hold that against us but the Biden administration has just come out with a
covert relief thing to help restaurants and you might as well take advantage of
that tell us about it Ben. So normally and I'm assuming that most of you don't realize this but
when you give your accountant your meal expense so I'm traveling while you're traveling or you're
buying you're going out and you're meeting with clients you're discussing business right okay
so I don't have to be on the road no it can be a business mail okay and you give me your expenses
every year you don't realize this but when I put those on the tax form the tax form is
taking that number and dividing it by half because generally I can only deduct half of what I eat
out or in a business the IRS reasons you're going to have to have food anyway so your sustenance
doesn't get a deduction but the extra stuff that you have to pay when you travel or you have your
business meal or whatever it is husband and wife go out and have their board meeting at
the restaurant whatever that is you only get to deduct half of that right so what's the new
deal so the new deal is you can now deduct 100 of that and that's in a way of kind of helping the
restaurant industry recover from all these losses. Unfortunately though it's kind of a bad thing for
me though because I've gained a lot of weight during this covid and now I have an incentive
to keep eating out and starting today I was going to try and stop eating out yeah I might I might
have to postpone that so okay i travel a lot and i don't keep all my receipts and all that crap
I just take what's called the per diem and the government if you go to just look up per diem
and it'll give you a map and and stuff and you actually the government publishes what you're
going to eat in a specific city and how much tax credit they'll give you on the per diem and it's
great because you take the per diem amount and i eat at the dollar menu meal on McDonald's for
breakfast lunch and dinner and so I spent $15. I'm laughing because it's true. It is true. It is true
and so I spent 15 bucks on food but the per diem for Tampa Florida says that it's 61 a day for food
so on my expense that I hand into my company I just put 61 every day and they pay me that $61
my company gets a deduction for it it's not income to me but I didn't actually spend $61 so I don't
worry about eating at restaurants and keeping the receipts so I just use the per diem well I'm a
lot bigger so I now normally the per diem Ben the tax dude cuts it in half when he actually figures
my tax bill for my company so Lee I'm a lot bigger than you though and I spend about $10 on each meal
at least right so i spend $30 on meals and the per diem that they're pretty $61. The per diem um it's
usually about $39 or 40 or so depending on where you're going $61 in Florida okay Tampa well let's
say it's $40 where i go i'm really only getting a deduction of $20. So I think what you're getting
at is these next two years this is actually this will be in effect until the end of 2022.
So when you're traveling rather than taking the per diem it might make more sense the next two
years to actually keep your receipts and go the actual cost method. Well don't I just get the all
of the per diem you normally cut it in half yeah I do and that's still cut in half because it has to
be at a restaurant and per diem is is not assuming you're eating at a restaurant every time so
so we can't just take the per diem this year it's probably going to be advantageous for me
and I may actually start eating because if I take the full restaurant deduction
and yet i'm only getting half the per diem I may get a better tax deduction it might be
worth my eating more but you're going to McDonald's that's not a restaurant right?
No it's a restaurant. A restaurant is actually defined as a place that prepares food
for immediate consumption. A grocery store is not a restaurant even though the deli in the krogers
isn't a restaurant even though that's prepared food that you take out and eat right so it has to
be an establishment that is generally designed for immediate take out eat or drink. So even like if
you order on Ubereats and you're not eating it at the actual restaurant it still qualifies for that?
That's correct and it has to be a business meal. Personal meals are still not deductible at all.
But anyways there's a lot more tax changes taking place that I think we're going to cover we're
going to cover a lot of stuff in fact we're having a Tax Summit here if you're interested in the Tax
Summit where Ben and I spend four hours and go through stuff for you check out the link below and
that'll take you over to the Tax Summit. Another thing that we have which is free is 10 tax tips
so check out our 10 tax tips and and and get that and of course it's it's not bad to get a
little free tax advice at any time yeah so what are some of the other things give me a bait
well come on bait me I think what we should do Lee is we have an Advanced Tax Tactics book right yeah
well we should we should select a new subscriber or someone who comments on this video and we'll
randomly select them Sariah will have a fun time entering those names in and I think we should mail
them our Advanced Tax Tactics book what's that a good idea it's kind of like a raffle no let's
invite them to the next Tax Summit all right we'll do that. So last year and by the way that's a $990
dollar value if you sign up on the internet and last year we did a year-end tax summit where we do
a year-end tax planning and we offer one-on-ones as well that had such a big success rate we
decided we're going to do mid-year and year-end every year so we're we're doing that now and uh
should we give him a deal on the $999 dollar well you know I'm gonna always say yes to deals right
yeah you're a wheeler dealer uh check out the website link below I guess there's
two links one for Tax Summit and one for the 10 tax tips and let's do this please go to
the website and we'll give you a deal no no no no let's not do that we'll send a coupon
code out to anyone that asks for it on this video comments ask for the code and we'll send it to you
okay if you say so yeah we don't want to give this deal to anybody that goes to our website that is
true so so that's that's a good point don't forget to subscribe guys and we will see you next time