Meal Expenses on a Schedule E

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
February 7, 2024
1 reply
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I am a Landlord and I have multiple properties and employees. I believe I can write off 50% of a meal when I take my employees out for lunch while we are working and still talking about the job of one of my rental properties. BUT where do I put that expense on my Schedule E? Under "other" and label it "50% meal"??

Best answer by QualityManagement-1

The meals are provided to employees.

So meals CAN be placed on Schedule E under travel if it's less than 50 miles away only as long as its business related and spent on employees? (at 50% of course)

We are almost there! Thanks for all this help so far.

DoninGA

Employee

Since you have multiple properties and employee you should be reporting your income and expenses as a business on Schedule C. You can then enter the meal expense for the employees.

But you cannot enter that expense on a Schedule E.

Carl11_2

Employee

If you're reporting your rental income/expenses on SCH E, then you can't have W-2 employees, as there's nowhere to report what you pay employees on SCH E. At best, they would be contractors to whom you would issue (if required) a 1099-NEC. Therefore, there would be no employees, and there's no deductions for "any" meals anywhere on the SCH E.
If you have employees that work for and get paid by you on a regular basis, then it "sounds" to me like you're running a hotel/motel/AirB&B/VRBO type of operation where houses or units are rented for short periods of time. That would be a SCH C business; not SCH E.

QualityManagement-1Author

Thanks for your reply. When entering my Schedule E Turbo Tax asks "Let's cover some uncommon situations" And it has an option to enter "This Business has wages." and it allows me to enter the W-2 wages $$$ paid for the property. When I click "learn more" this pops up:

"Qualified wages
There is a specific definition of wages that must be used when calculating this deduction. The full details are explained in IRS Notice 2018-64, but here is a brief summary.

All wages must be reported on a Form W-2 that has been properly filed with the IRS. Statutory wages (reported on Form W-2 with "statutory employee" checked in box 13) are not counted as wage for purpose of this deduction."

So I am just learning... and I think I can have employees for my rental properties? FYI... my employees are my 16 year old kids so I don't have to pay all the fees that typically go with having employees since they are under 18 and they are my kids. I already did W2's for them.