What if I told you a way where you could get the IRS to
pay for a swimming pool? I'm sure if,
like me, my wife really wanted a swimming pool,
what if I told you that the IRS paid for my swimming pool?
Or if I, if we paid to put one in and the IRS paid
for it? It, uh, might not be exactly like that,
but there's a little bit of a, a catch to it,
and there's things you need to follow, and very specific things you need to
follow for it to actually be a deduction. And remember with deductions,
it's use, it's not the IRS paying you for something,
but it's reducing your tax burden on that specific thing.
But let's, let's play a game real quick. Like,
how could you remember to ask with tax questions,
you want to ask how, like, how could you?
Write off a swimming pool.
So I'm going to talk about a specific part of the tax code and
it's specifically related to the medical deduction.
So I'm going to talk specifically about how you could write off a swimming
pool or all sorts of other medical deductions.
If you follow or if you're underneath these certain qualifying conditions.
So first, it needs to be a qualifying medical expense for
it to even qualify as a medical deduction. And so when we're talking about
medical deductions here, it is a deduction when you itemize,
when you itemize deductions on your personal taxes.
These are deductions that you pool together with your other itemized deductions.
So first you need to itemize deductions.
And so if, assuming you do itemize deductions,
or your expenses in the medical area are big enough,
you'd have to get over those thresholds. You would need qualified medical expenses.
So a qualified medical expense is not.
It's not something, well, we'll talk about the pool specifically.
If you're buying a pool and it's for personal purposes,
there's not going to be a deduction for it. But if they're,
if you've got back issues or if you've got spine issues,
if you've got a medical reason why you might need a pool or a
hot tub and a doctor is actively telling you that you
need this very specific thing to help you recover and help you live
a long, happy and healthy life. There could be.
I'm not going to go out and say everyone can deduct a pool.
Like, it's got to be specifically for you,
specifically recommended by your doctor. And there's doctor.
No, honestly, I wouldn't like type something out and have the doctor.
Dr. Shine and I would have the doctors completely write something up and include
how often it should be used. Cause here's,
as we get into like deductions like this that are like borderline personal deduction
versus deductible expense. If you're like,
yeah, I use that pool once a year for medical purposes.
I'm going to write it off. That's not going to work. Same with business
expenses. Like if you're buying something, your business barely uses it and you use
it for personal purposes, most of the time.
It's probably not going to be a business deduction either.
But if it's like every single day and the doctors in their note or
in their report and their, what they write, say every single day,
you need to be doing this, this, and this like,
like, a physical therapist, you might want to get multiple notes from multiple doctors.
If you have to use it, say every single day, I'd say the time,
the duration, when, where, and how to use it and how to recover for
how long. And if you compare that amount of use,
and you actually do use it for that, those purposes,
compare that to your personal usage. So you go,
yeah, me and my family, we get in it once a week,
type of thing. You're like, okay, well, six out of the seven days,
it's medical pool, it's a medical pool for,
used for medical deduction purposes,
but one out of the seven days, it's per,
it's a personal pool. So you take one divided by seven,
fourteen percent personal use, eighty-six percent medical use.
So that's, I'm not going to,
yeah, like, actually I'll leave it there because I,
I like these kind of brain exercises because I want you to think about
what could be deductible. Remember, it's not,
it's not black or white. There's things that can or can't be,
and we want you to follow the tax law,
but make sure you're doing it correctly. And you're not just deducting something that,
that doesn't qualify. So if a couple of other things real quick.
Make sure you have the actual reason for it.
You need it for medical purposes. So check that box.
Make sure you have documentation for it. And make sure you're not just rounding
or using an estimate. Like if you have an invoice, if you have a
contractor pay for it. Or you paid a contractor for it,
like itemize that or keep track of that and keep copies of that.
Submit that when you're filing your tax returns.
Um, and remember it needs to be paid.
You can't just think of things like, oh, well we put in this contract.
it off this year as a medical expense.
You wouldn't be able to do that. It needed to be paid in that
tax year for the medical purposes specifically.
Um, to just make sure you,
it's paid in that tax year as well.
So the medical. Medical expenses. There is one of the biggest,
a lot of times they are overlooked, but there's actually a good reason why
they're overlooked because for medical expenses to even start counting,
it needs to be over seven and a half percent of your income.
of income. So say you have a hundred thousand dollars of income of adjusted
gross income. You need at least $7,500 of medical expenses before it even starts
to make a dent into your itemized deductions.
So a lot of times, like if you make a hundred thousand dollars a
year and your expenses are less than $7,000,
I wouldn't even bother adding them up. But if you had a hot tub,
you had a special bed you needed and you had special medication or special
food that only you could eat and that you needed for specific condition.
Like. I want you to think, and even mileage you drive related to medical
expenses, miles or specific,
um, yeah, all sorts of things.
Things to help you with recovery and things to help you with prevention and
specific, of course, prescription. It can get
a little cumbersome. If you don't really know what the amounts are,
but that's kind of coming full circle.
The way to track that, I actually would recommend that.
People do have accounting or have a way where you're tracking your personal expenses.
Even without a business, just track your personal expenses somewhere.
Coming from an accountant, you might expect that I track my personal expenses,
which I do, even when they're not deductible. But I'd recommend that everyone do
it. Cause then for things like this, you could add them up and know
when it, when it makes sense or not. But that is,
that is a way that the IRS could partially pay for your pool.
Or they could partially pay for a hot tub.
They could partially pay for medical equipment or a exercise equipment.
Things that help you specifically to prevent a physical or mental defect
or illness. Um, it's preventing those.
Um, or recovering from those,
like, injuries and illnesses. So those would all count.
So we are, yeah, that's,
that's it for today. I've got a tool we have.
I believe that we do. We have this in the Wealth Game Basics course.
We have the HSA.
I've got a big list of things that are deductible under your,
like, a health savings account and actually the things that are deductible for your
health savings account. A lot of
those are qualified a lot or all those are qualified medical expenses where if
they're not paid by an HSA, they could be in that bucket.
You know, the seven, seven and a half percent limit where you need to
get over that. All those things could be included.
So you could either reach out or log into the,
uhm, the wealth game basics course and you'll see the HSA,
HSA, I think we call it the HSA, HRA reimbursement expenses.
We're reimbursable. And it's a list of,
like, a couple hundred things that qualify. So that's it for today.
Have a good rest of the day. See you.
