I've seen a few people ask about Private Pilot Licensing, and I think in those cases the questions or answers were misunderstood or misguided.
Here is the IRS requirement, sourced here:
To be deductible, your expenses must be for education that (1) maintains or improves skills needed in your present work or (2) a law requires to keep your present salary, status or job. However, even if the education meets either of these tests, the education can't be part of a program that will qualify you for a new trade or business or that you need to meet the minimal educational requirements of your present trade or business.
Here is a hypothetical scenario I am interested in:
- Bob works for an LLC, employed as an engineer who works on a piece of avionics hardware
- Bob can do his work using a simulator (a PPL is not a requirement for the job)
- Bob could greatly improve his work skillset by earning a PPL and then collecting real data in his aircraft instead of using a simulator, allowing him to improve his product, or correct false assumptions made by the simulator designers
- Bob cannot obtain new employment after earning my PPL, since PPL holders are not authorized for paid flights. This requires commercial or ATP endorsements, which are a different rating and a different process.
Going by these metrics, it is my understanding that acquiring the PPL training falls under the metric of education expenses that improve one's existing job skillset, and one would report these as itemized on their 1040 Schedule C, reported Profits and Losses for Business.
IRS Topic 513 doesn't say anything about flight school accreditation which some other users mentioned.I believe that relates to a special type of PPL program called Part 141, which does put someone on a pipeline for commercial rating and a new career. I am speaking here specifically about Part 61 licenses, which only allow for a pilot to rent a plane and fly for non-commercial operations that are incidental to their existing line of work.
There is an entire FAA literature on what qualifies as flight time incident to a business vs commercial, but that is outside the scope of this question.
Can anyone help me see what I might be missing for deducting a Part 61 PPL cost against the Profit/Loss of an LLC that builds avionics, considering the expense as skills improvement training?
