Quote Originally Posted by playfelt View Post
In the event of an audit you would have a hard time winning that arguement. If you have daycare age children it is just assumed that the items are available to them during non-daycare hours.
Agreed ... it is that same logic that they use to disallow us claiming our land line phones or basic cable and so forth ... if you worked out of the home the phone would still be there for our personal use when not working and it does not cost more to have it there for 'business' hours therefore we cannot claim the basic line as a business expense only any 'add ons' you might want to make business easier like call answer or display or forward.

One of the ways one accountant I heard speak used to 'prove' you have personal only toys for your children verses them all being 'shared use' toys is to KEEP ALL RECEIPTS including those for toys that are not used in daycare so that you can prove that 'see these are the receipts for the daycare only toys and these are this years receipts for my child's personal use toys that they play with outside of daycare hours' ... and than you can later years sell any personal use toys they outgrow to yourself and claim them as an expense at that time.

It is the same with FOOD ... in the event of ever being audited you should keep ALL your grocery and food receipts so that you can show 'see this $9000 in receipts was food to feed the daycare and this $12,000 in food receipts was used to feed my family which as you can see was not claimed as business expenses' ... if you do not have a way to prove that your family was not being fed with that $9000 worth of receipts they can try to use what THEY felt is a reasonable food allowance for your daycare which might not be accurate at all

I keep ALL our reciepts in this house to show 'these were our business expenses' and 'these were our personal expenses' so that it is clear I am not trying to pass off personal expenses as business.