tax season!

+---------------- Bizarre Tax Write-Offs ------------------+  
  
A client approached Manhattan CPA Marc Albaum about a very personal tax matter. "He had made some money being a sperm donor and wanted to know if he could take a depletion allowance," Albaum recalls. "I told him he really needed to be an oil well or something like that."  

A client insisted on deducting the cost of his television and cable service, against his accountant's advice. "His reasoning was that he was a Spanish teacher at school, and  
the only reason he bought the TV and had the cable was for the Spanish channels so he could be able to teach his students better," Frank Howard, CPA and principal of Howard and Waltrip in Dallas, says.

Back when the Society of Louisiana CPAs manned a tax hot line, few inquiries stumped them. But Al Suffrin, SLCPA's communications and public relations director, recalls one that did: "We took a call from an ostrich farmer in St. Tammany Parish who called in to find out how to go about depreciating an ostrich," he says. Strange as it sounds, you can depreciate an ostrich or any other livestock, as long as it's used for breeding.

"I had a guy come in one time wanting to know if he could deduct the cost of his dog food. His reasoning was that his dog was security for his house, therefore the dog food became a security expense," Howard says.  

A rookie tax accountant completed a  return for one of the firm's old and trusted clients and turned it in to his boss, says Mary Anne Petesch, a CPA with Hagen Kurth Perman and Co. of Seattle. There followed several loud whoops of laughter from the partner's office. It seems the client had accidentally lost his dentures when they fell in the toilet and had claimed them on his taxes as an act-of-God casualty loss.

[By Bankrate.com]