All right, Sharon, we're on to another topic here. Okay, I like this one. Yeah, we all like to eat, right? Lord, I've been doing it all week to excess, eating like a homeless person. Well, you know, that is another potential advantage to being 1099 and running your own business is you have the benefit of if you're having a business-related meal and a portion of this will be tax deductible. There is a lot of confusion around this. Not only to mention that, you know, after COVID, they allowed us instead of 50% for a couple of years, we were able to deduct 100% of business meals. Now we're back down to 50% of business meals. So what is the rationale behind that? I know there's a supposed reason. Well, I mean, if you really think about it, you're gonna eat anyway. So that's kind of the idea behind the 50%. Okay. Is that you're not deducting your meal, you're deducting their meal. Kind of the general idea. Okay. So 50% deductible. Now, Sharon, you know, if you take your favorite surgeon out to a wonderful dinner, you know, let's just say you went to a really nice steakhouse wine, and you're discussing the fact that he, you would like to see if he would allow you to anesthetize his patients because he has his own practice. That would be an acceptable business meal. Okay. You're talking business. You had a business reason for being there. And what I encourage people to do is to document that. So I don't know whether you've ever noticed, if you and I are out to eat and I pay for the meal, then what happens is on the back of that, I write Sharon Pierce, we talked about Beyond the Mask podcast, who we were gonna have on the show, blah, blah, blah. And I just write it on the back of a receipt. And what I do personally is I file the receipts by month in an envelope. And at the end of the- Exactly what I do. Is it? Yes, that is funny. We've never talked about that. We've never talked about that. Yeah. And at the end of the year, I take those receipts for 12 months. They're categorized by month and I file them away with my tax returns for the year. So if the IRS ever wants to know, Sharon and I had lunch, dinner, whatever on this day, what are we talking about? Well, here, here's all the receipts. Look the back of them. I do it now in my little app that I have with QuickBooks and it comes through and I keep them and I take pictures of them and I write on the front, not the back. So I will write on the front who I was with, those types of things. And I take a picture in the deduction where I swipe right and left. And I add the receipt in there, but I also keep them in envelopes. Yeah. And keep them like that too. Yeah, I think the key is exactly what you're saying though. Who did you dine with and what was the business purpose of that meal? And if you do that, that is acceptable practice by the IRS. Now, on the other hand, you go out to dinner with a friend, you're talking about the Taylor Swift concert you just went to, Sharon, that would be a non-deductible expense. Yeah, but I don't think we'll be talking about me going to Taylor Swift. You're not a Swiftie? I'm not a Swiftie. Not a Swiftie, okay. She's a sharp little gal. I met her once, but sweet, very sweet. Pierce and I met her before she got to be Taylor Swift. Cute as a button. Oh, okay. Interesting. So, CRNAs have a lot of questions around this. So what constitutes a business meal? Making sure that you're talking about business. You've got a business reason for being there. It can't be a social reason for being there. It needs to be a business reason for being there, and you need to document that. So, for me, it's probably pretty easy for me to do that, for CRNAs. It can be easy, but you've got to make sure that you stay on top of it.

tax benefits

deducting business meals

self-employed individuals

IRS regulations

business meal expenses