topic Business Discount for Services in Business & farm

Business Discount for Services

roberikson — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 05:40:22 GMT

My wife is a CPR instructor. She taught a class to the staff at a camp for disadvantaged children. For the amount of people trained she normally would charge $1200. She only changed them $600. Can she claim a $600 loss as a business expense?

Rob

Re: Business Discount for Services

DianeW777 — Fri, 18 Feb 2022 21:57:59 GMT

No. Unfortunately the IRS (or Congress) believes our time is worthless when it comes to taxes. A deduction of lost income when it was never reported as taxable income in the first place is not allowed.

And you cannot report your income "estimating" your own labor, either.

Re: Business Discount for Services

roberikson — Fri, 18 Feb 2022 22:46:55 GMT

Thank you.

Re: Business Discount for Services

Rick19744 — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 00:48:19 GMT

The reason is that you can't take a deduction unless you have a true outlay of cash or you actually recognized income (and paid tax on it) that was never collected.

In your case, you never recognized anything other than the $600. You never paid tax on that other $600 since you are most likely on the cash method of accounting.

Has nothing to do with the value "lost".