Just wondering what are the guidelines for deducting meals & entertainment for your business-I know that if you take daycare kids to dinner-that can count, but what if you were at dinner with your family and talking about your daycare....can you use this. Or must the main purpose of the meal be for daycare purposes?

I'm also going to use the standard meal deduction instead of counting up all food I purchased,but I have certain things such as infant snacks & foods that are 100% for daycare use, can I tag those on somewhere else or forget about them?

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I wouldn't count meals for your own family unless your spouse does a lot of work for your business. To claim such a meal you would need to keep a food receipt, name of the persons at the meal, the topic of discussion about your business. The primary purpose of the meal needs to be business.

If you use the standard meal allowance rule you can include infant snacks in your meal totals, so no reason to deduct them separately.


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I took a DCK out to lunch but was told I can't deduct the cost, that I can only use the standard lunch deduction?

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If you are using the standard meal allowance method of claiming food expenses you can't claim the actual cost of a meal served in your home. It's all one way (standard meal allowance rate) of the other (actual food costs). If you take a day care child out to lunch away from your home and are using the standard meal allowance rate you must continue to use it and count this as one lunch ($2.21) even though it cost a lot more than that.

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