Tax deductible - travel to the annual meeting.

[rayonline]

It's the time when meetings are being held. I was reading about their letters and they wanted to firm up the catering numbers. I have never attended and I am not in AKL or CHC. So I googled what do people get to eat at these meetings and one said that travel expenses are tax deductible. That would open yourself up for capital gain taxes right? You may still be that family non frequent investor but if you are claiming expenses you ought to be taxed on gains right?

[Aaron]

Besides not recommending taking advice from an online forum I would say it "depends".

Firstly are you a trader or not?

Do you invest for dividend yield or capital gain? Do you invest long term or short term?

If your investing activity is sufficiently large and you are investing for the long term for yield then you could claim meeting costs without it having any effect on whether your capital gains will be taxed as a trader or a long term investor.

Maybe your question should be. If I start claiming meeting expenses will IRD take note of my activities and notice I am not returning profits from trading.

Without any idea of your investing activities/strategies it is really hard to say but going to company meetings and claiming the travel costs will have absolutely no relevance to whether you pay tax on your capital gains. It all depends on whether you are an investor or a trader.

[777]

A good post by Aaron. Any time you draw attention to yourself on your tax return raises the chances of the IRD looking a bit closer to all your activities.

And capital gains tax does not exist in NZ. Trading profits are what you are referring to.

[blackcap]

I think you can claim travel expenses either if you are a trader or if you are an investor.

An investor earns income from dividends and interest and so can offset the costs in getting this income.

A trader makes income from selling high and buying low and can also offset costs such as travel to meetings in deriving this income.

Its not more difficult than that is it?

[iceman]

blackcap has summed it up perfectly