Income tax & protein food

Hi all, I was just wondering if anyone deducts the high protein, low sugar foods that they buy from Barix and Unjury, for example, to round out their daily protein count. I would think it is a medical expense due to the surgery and wondered if anyone has done this yet. If you have could you give us some guidelines so we stay legal!!! Thanks, Kathleen

I have a friend who's a WLSer and an accountant. I'll ask him. Be back later!

I like the way you think here!

Kathleen, What I found was that some accountants will allow you to include protein and vitamins, and others will not. The accountants like to interpret the IRS laws according to the way they read them. My mother's accountant frowned on trying to deduct health food, my accountant said I could probably slip it in and never worry about it. The IRS agent who lives down the street from me has said that it would be extremely hard to defend deducting protein in an audit. So like everything with taxes, you are left to your own degree of risk. Remember you have to have 7% of your income to even qualify for the health deduction anyway. Your bud, Rob S DE ObesityHelp.com Leader

i did not i thought it a risk.....smiles.......special foods does not count as medications and i hate to say i could not find a group where it would work legally...i wanted to use but could not find a good enough angle. the worst senario if you use it...is down the road is they would disallow it you would just have to pay the money back i believe the odds of you having to be auditted is very low as long as it below 5000.00...without going into detail i got caught with the state and i had to repay the money....no fine.....just repaid the money and then took it off the next year what i paid them on my federal income tax.

I spoke to my accountant at work, CPA, and he said that my vitamins and protein drinks are deductible. His reasoning is, "your taking vitamins/protein because you have to, not because you want to". Kim S