Reptile & Amphibian Forums

So hobby losses can be claimed on your tax deductions, Right? Would this include our reptile hobby? Does anybody know anything that would be tax deductible when it comes to our snakes? Thanks in advance!
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Cheers!
• Chelsea Lynn Gardiner
(and Frank M. Wood)

In general -- if you plan on making money you need to plan on paying taxes -- you can file a separate schedule C for your hobby with your personal tax return but you need to plan on showing a profit from your hobby within a few years of start up. You can expense all costs of housing, maintaining, marketing your animals. You should probably have an accountant walk you through the first filing at least.
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Tosha
JET Pythons
Toshas Blog

Thanks to the both of you! So I don't ever intend on making money from my snakes. I mean, yes I breed, but it's for us and not anyone else. (Haha, and I'm sure most of us average joe-hobbyists know damn well we'll never make back the $$$ we put in, LoL). So basically, calling it a hobby means to making it profitable in the future, which I don't. It's just the basic care of them -- bedding, etc -- I wanted to know if I could claim. So I guess it wouldn't count for me than?

I did find this in my searching:
http://www.wwwebtax.com/deductions_z_other/hobby_losses.htm
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Cheers!
• Chelsea Lynn Gardiner
(and Frank M. Wood)

you will have to make some money with your hobby (sell some babies, do some paid lectures, take photos with them at a show and sell the photos - anything that makes money that requires the snakes)in order to deduct your expenses. If they don't ever bring in any income in any way, then I don't think you will be able to deduct any of their expenses.

If you do "charity work", such as free, educational lectures, then you can deduct a certain amount for mileage, and maybe a few other related expenses. But again, I am not an accountant, so be sure to check with a professional before you decide how to proceed.

N/P
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Cheers!
• Chelsea Lynn Gardiner
(and Frank M. Wood)

if you are calling it a hobby and not a business, that you can deduct related expenses only up to the amount that you took in from the hobby. For example, if you produced a couple of clutches of babies and sold them for a total of $2,000, then you could deduct up to $2,000 in expenses (food, mileage required to get food or other supplies or for sales, pro-rated electricity for the snake room, advertising, professional dues, etc). But that a hobby can't deduct more than you took in.

If it is a business, the IRS will allow you to actually lose money and show a loss that can be deducted from other income (such as a regular job), at least FOR A WHILE. I think that the rule of thumb is that you need to show a profit within 3 or 5 years, or something similar. But there are always exceptions. But deducting losses beyond income is for a business, not a hobby.

I am not an accountant - my CPA does my taxes. But that is my unprofessional gleaning of tax info over the years. The details are complicated, so don't rely on any nonprofessional (such as me, lol!) to be the last word. Even CPAs and IRS agents themselves often can't seem to agree with the final word. So you can find general ideas of how it works here, but do careful research, and rely on professionals for the details.

Yup, I believe Kathy is right.. If your expenses outweigh your income generated from you snake business for a few years then it is considered a hobby not a business.

Man, if only I could deduct all the money I have spent on this my tax return would be a lot bigger..
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Seeking bigger cages for the family

I think you can claima depreciation value of breeding animals. They do it with horse and bulls. It carries over from writing off depreciation of farming equipment.

It may even be 10% of the value of the snakes that you can write off every year.

James