Question

Are meals 100% deductible for food review for video content creators?

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
March 1, 2023
1 reply
0 views

My husband and I have a monetized YouTube Channel where we sometimes review food and restaurants, along with other family oriented content vlogs with our kids. Are our meals for our food review videos deductible? And if they are, are they deductible by 50% or 100%?

Not A Product Question

J

JohnW152

Yes, if you're doing work as a food reviewer, and it's an actual business venture as opposed to a hobby, these expenses would be 100% deductible.

According to What Can I Deduct? in the IRS' Publication 535 (2022), Business Expenses,

To be deductible, a business expense must be both ordinary and necessary. An ordinary expense is one that is common and accepted in your industry. A necessary expense is one that is helpful and appropriate for your trade or business. An expense does not have to be indispensable to be considered necessary.

For your industry, these would appear to be ordinary and necessary expenses and wouldn't be subject to normal meal deduction limitations.

Just as a word of caution, though, someone can't use a loss from a hobby activity to offset other income. Make sure that you're not taking expenses for a hobby, rather than a business.

Please see the IRS' Know the difference between a hobby and a business and the TurboTax article When the IRS Classifies Your Business as a Hobby for additional information.