Sharon, we're going to be talking today about annual meeting expenses. You and I have talked about this on several occasions. But it's one of the biggest questions we get from clients is about annual meetings. What can we have our annual meeting? How does it need to be set up? What do we have to do? So again, this is just one of those sections that we're just trying to get the information out there so people kind of have a basic knowledge. Always make sure that you're incorporating in your advisor, be it your accountant or whoever you're working with, to talk to them about what this meeting should look like. But Sharon, you've had annual meetings before. I have, but let's clarify, this is annual meetings of your corporation. Because when I hear annual meeting, I think of the AANA annual meeting. There you go, yeah. But it could be both the same. It could be both the same, but you're already gonna deduct that one. So- Don't do that. Maybe you get another one in. So we're gonna go through this today. And one of the things, especially if you're an escort, the escort, you must have an annual meeting every year if you're an escort, okay? And that annual meeting just has to lay out how the year was, what do we project the next year to be? Were there any bonus payments to shareholders? I mean, you kind of have a line item of things that you need to do during that meeting. And it needs to be documented. You've gotta have at least one shareholder attending the meeting. For a lot of CRNAs, you might be the only shareholder. Maybe your spouse is another shareholder, but you have a meeting. And the meeting must take place in the year in which you are going to deduct the meeting. So you can't have a meeting in 2024 for 2023. It had to be in 2023. And again, you can have it anytime during the tax year. I mean, you can have more than one meeting, but you must have at least one and document that as an escort. So you can have more than one meeting? Absolutely. If you need to have meetings and you can document that, you absolutely can have more than one meeting. Okay, because I've only ever had one meeting. Yeah. It's just, depending upon what you need and what's going on at that time, there are reasons to document these meetings and so forth. I mean, you being past ANA presidents, of course, you're familiar with Robert's Rules of Order and all those things. I mean, that's part of it, but when do you have to have a meeting? And those are good questions for your advisor. Do I need to document this in my meeting minutes that we did this or we did that? One of the things that people don't realize that you really should document and change is if you're changing your benefits. You should have a meeting for that, saying, hey, we changed our benefits. We're gonna do this. We're gonna offer a 401k plan. We're gonna offer a benefit plan. We're changing our health insurance, yada, yada, yada. Those are things that really should be documented in your meeting minutes. So what type of expenses qualify? And this gets a little murky. I always think about a buddy of mine who used to work for the IRS. And he would always tell me that pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered. And it's the same thing with this. I mean, you've gotta be able to get wherever you're having your meeting. If you have your meeting outside of your house or you're having it at another entity or another place, you've gotta be able to get there for your meeting. That means your travel expenses. You've gotta be able to get there. You gotta be able to get home, airfare, hotel, meals, transportation, and so forth. You've also, if you've got some personal stuff worked in with that, remember you can't take the personal stuff with the business stuff. If you've got meeting space, if it's more than one of you, some of our CRNAs have groups and they've got other people that work for them. They sometimes come to these meetings. They have multiple members that own the business. They might wanna rent a meeting space somewhere and they're able to deduct that as well. But just remember, those are things that are directly associated with that meeting that you actually can't have as a qualifying expense. If you are having the meeting and there's three of you and you order in lunch that day for the meeting, then that would be a deductible expense. If the meeting is over and you're going out for drinks and so forth, that has nothing to do with the meeting. So probably not a deductible expense in that scenario. What cannot be deducted? Maybe that was the better question. Anything that you go out, like I said, if you're on a sightseeing expedition, you guys rent wave runners if you're at the beach, anything that cannot be tied directly to that meeting. I alluded to a minute ago, lunch at that meeting, you're at the meeting, you're having lunch. You bring in, and most people aren't gonna do this, but you bring in a motivational speaker to talk to everybody and pump them up, or you bring in a billing expert to talk to them about billing and how you're gonna change your billing next year. Those would be directly related. Spouse expenses. If your spouse is not involved in the business and they are not a shareholder of the corporation, you cannot deduct their expenses going to and from the meeting or anything associated with the meeting, food, any of those type of things. If they're not part of the business, then absolutely not can their expenses be deducted. Define shareholder. Shareholder means that they actually own stock in the company, or you could have someone who, you know, has a role in the company. Maybe they're president or vice president or secretary. They have a role, they have a reason for being there. If your spouse is not involved in that business at all, they really have no reason to be at that meeting. It'd be like you taking peers to the A&A meeting and setting in on the business meeting. He has no business in being there at the business meeting, right? And to that extent, you know, some of our CRNAs do have their spouses as part of the business and run the business or be the CEO or whatever, and you definitely can do that as well. One of the things that the IRS prounds on are really, again, here's that word again, Sharon, we keep talking about it, is reasonable. Make sure that whatever you do is reasonable, that somebody, a reasonable person would think, ah, this expense could be attributable to this meeting. You know, if you're having your meeting and it's just you by yourself, and you go to a place that is $3,000 a night, rent a place, have a meeting, you're there for two days, you're grinding and dining yourself, and you're documenting your meeting, but I mean, it's really above and beyond what that should probably be called for. That's probably not reasonable. Those are excess expenses and probably would not be deductible. If the IRS were to look at that, they would probably say, hmm, I'm not sure this is reasonable. Explain to me, Ms. Pierce, how this is a reasonable deduction. Another question, if your spouse is a shareholder, do you have to pay them? No, you don't have to pay shareholders. No, you do not have to pay them for position sales. All right, so how do you claim the deduction? Again, we're not gonna get in the weeds here, but on the 1120-S, remember we had a whole section talking about the 1120-S, which is the form for the S Corporation. You actually put this in the other deductions section. You've gotta maintain all the documentation if you ever got audited. That includes your expenses, receipts, and remember, you must do meeting minutes. You need to document that you had a meeting. What was the meeting about? Who was in attendance? What did you cover? What decisions did you make? What are you gonna do differently moving forward? Review the prior year. You should maintain all of that every single year. Sharon and I have a notebook that I put meeting minutes in for all the companies that we have, and each one of those companies does their own meeting minutes. Every single year, those are all in there. So if the IRS ever asks, I've got my meeting minutes right here. And like I said, there are times that you wanna have meetings outside of the annual meeting for certain reasons as well, and you document those as well. Again, the key to a lot of this is just the documentation and making sure you've got your ducks in a row. Like I said, the meeting minutes, that's probably the biggest thing out of this that you need to make sure that you do. Keeping up with your receipts, agendas or programs, something that proves that this meeting was actually business relevant. Part of that can be the meeting minutes. If you got more than one person or several people there, actually having an agenda, typed up agenda, you could do that. You could type up an agenda with just yourself and your spouse. But again, like a regular formal meeting would come to fruition. These are things that you need to be keeping up with as well. Actually, you just gave me an idea. What I'm gonna do is get one of the big binders and put sleeves in there for my receipts, because I'm very good about keeping my receipts, but this way I can have it all in one place. So thank you for that. And I'm gonna get on that this week. Sounds good.

corporate annual meetings

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deductible expenses

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