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I'm looking for help with claiming meals. I have always kept all receipts and figured the food costs and my accountant uses the form from the food program at the end of the year for taxes. I was wondering if I should use the standard deduction this year~ and if I do use the way of receipts, am I allowed to claim the "extra" snacks and meals which I am not reimbursed for from the food program with the standard deduction? How many snacks and meals am I able to claim per child? Thank you!
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If you use the standard deduction method you can claim up to six meals a day: one breakfast, one lunch, one dinner, and three snacks per child, per day, but you have to actually serve the meal or snack to count it. You can claim these whether or not they were reimbursed by the food program.
I'm not positive, but I don't think you can mix the methods of deduction, i.e. use the standard deduction and then claim and extra meals or snacks that you couldn't claim with the standard. One exception I can think of to that is if you have a food that's part of an activity (like a birthday cake or something like that), then that's deductible as part of the activity expense.
You can find the current deduction rates at the IRS website or at the Redleaf Press website. -
Food deduction
MyAngels is correct - six servings per day per child is the maximum you can claim, assuming you serve that many. You cannot claim actual food costs for some meals and the standard meal allowance rate for other meals. If you use the standard meal allowance rate you could also count kitchen expenses (food preparation expenses, paper supplies, etc.) and items used in activities that might also be food (macaroni used in an art project). Also, count birthday cake as long as it is not a substitute for a meal or snack.Comment
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