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Victoria Lee is a lawyer in Los Angeles in a pretty fancy area, Beverly Hills.
And if you've got an appointment with Victoria, chances are, you've got a problem.
I've impressed in tax controversy and a little bit of tax resolution for about ten years.
And that's sort of like a term of art, right? What is a tax controversy?
So tax controversy is when there is a dispute as to the underlying tax.
In other words, you've been filing your taxes, or not in some cases, and the tax authorities are not buying what you're selling.
If people walk through your door, they are already probably in trouble with the IRS.
Yes. They are being audited. Yes.
And when you sit down, the first thing she's going to ask is, what's the issue?
And working where she does, people come in with some kind of wild problems.
I've seen people try to deduct their bantlies, jets, rose voices.
Lots of people with normal problems come to her too.
But no matter who you are, she tries not to judge.
You want them to one not feel stupid for the choices that they've made.
Yeah, but also to feel comfortable that you have their best interests at heart.
So if you kind of shut them down out the gate, then it's not going to create a good attorney-client relationship.
So I do try to empathize with them and understand why they thought that this information was good information.
So one of the questions she'll always ask is, where are you getting your info from?
Where'd you get the information that led you to believe you should deduct these expenses on your tax return?
And a lot of them say TikTok.
They're getting their info off. They're tax info off TikTok.
Yes.
Ah, TikTok. Home to incredible economics explainer videos by a few of our planet money colleagues.
And also, yes, lots of questionable tax advice.
If you're not on TikTok or on Instagram, they're pretty much the same thing these days.
Consider yourself lucky.
Because on these platforms, there are a lot of videos where it's hard to tell if the person giving advice actually knows what they're talking about.
Or if they're just kind of faking it, trying to get an audience.
And a good portion of the feed for me at least is videos of dudes, mostly, talking about business,
how to have a side hustle, passive income, and some really bonkers tax advice.
I used to work at this guy that doesn't file taxes. He never has and he never started.
It's actually a pool that impulsures you to save millions on taxes.
Tax loopholes paying your own children within your business.
You can pay your kid $12,000 on taxes. And IRS definitely doesn't want you to know about this.
I'll be be. I'm talking about moving to Dubai, which is a tax-free state.
What's the age that I can start paying these kids? Can I pay Olivia? Eight months old? Can I pay J.P.?
Who's two years old? I would say yes if you could.
Okay, I think we got enough of that. Anyways, Victoria says all this TikTok tax advice could not come at a worst time.
The IRS has a ton of new funding to hire thousands of agents right now to do audits.
And they know all these tricks.
There is kind of nothing new under the sun. They were people far before us, more creative, and more intelligent.
And so these are like Mickey Mouse schemes that aren't going to fly with the IRS.
So not only have people been doing these schemes for a long time, but the IRS knows about them.
Yeah, these are like preschool level schemes. It's not going to work.
Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Nick Fountain. It is tax season.
I was supposed to finish mine last weekend. We'll probably do them this weekend.
And while I was procrastinating and scrolling through the feeds,
I see a lot of weird tax advice.
And the thing about a lot of this advice is it's not totally bogus.
Pretty often there is a grain of truth in the nonsense.
Today on the show, TikTok made me deduct it.
We're going to run some of the greatest hits of TikTok tax advice by some bona fide tax experts
and learn a thing or two about the tax code.
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Today we're going to do sort of the good, the bad and the ugly of TikTok tax advice if that's cool with you.
That's great.
All right, tax attorney Victoria Lee is back to help us make sense of tax TikTok.
And she and all the other experts we're going to talk to today want to emphasize that they are not giving out tax advice
and that if you need help, you should consult a tax professional.
All right, let's get to it.
Now you have a lost money gambling and wonder could this benefit me anyway?
Okay, so this is some tax advice that you see all the time on the internet.
About how you can use your gambling losses to reduce your tax bill.
And this one, the guy is talking to the camera from a fancy desk, but there are so many other examples.
Howled we when you realized your lot of tickets and scratch offs can be used for write offs.
That video has like a million views.
This next one is a skit.
Those are very big on TikTok and it is recorded at a casino in Vegas.
I keep moving.
Sounds like a write off to me.
You mean I can write off my gambling loss?
It's the Dr. Gambling losses. You only have to meet three tests.
This gambling losses write off thing is everywhere.
It's gone to the point that there are even parodies of it.
If you lose every single bet that you ever make, you'll report a loss and you won't have to pay taxes
because you'll have lost all your money because you're addicted to gambling and you can't stop.
All right, let's run all this by our tax expert, Victoria.
These are all talking about gambling losses and how you can write off your gambling losses.
Is that true?
It's it's true. Here's the problem.
It's misleading.
Victoria says these videos get to a pretty fundamental concept in taxes.
The idea of taxable income.
That's the amount you earn that's going to wind up being taxed.
When you gamble and you win big at the casino, congrats.
That is income. The casino is pretty likely going to let the IRS know how much you've won.
But it's not like you're only out there winning to hit the jackpot.
You probably made some losing bets too.
And so you are only taxed on your net winnings.
Your winnings minus your losses.
In tax terms, you deduct those losses from your winnings and you get your taxable income.
But you got to have good records.
A lot of people, they don't go to the casino with their notebook.
And you know, the casino is trying to help you out.
You know, you can track your activity through your gambling card.
But then a lot of people start playing and cash.
And so they're not necessarily using their gambling card.
And so the issue comes in proving that you have losses to offset your winnings.
Victoria, she would know.
She sees a lot of audits about this.
This year, at least 20 gambling audits.
Victoria says at the end of the day,
what people misunderstand the most about this gambling loss is saving you money on taxes thing.
It's like the fundamental nature of what a tax deduction actually is.
A lot of these videos are borderline encouraging people to go out and gamble or to spend money in pursuit of deductions.
But the amount you save on those deductions is always going to be less than what you had to spend to get them.
So chasing deductions, it's a losing game.
For illustrative purposes, I like to use easy numbers.
Okay, go for it.
Say you want to deduct $100 in your in the 35% tax bracket.
So you spend $100 to save $35.
Well, guess what? Now you're at a loss $65.
Right.
Doesn't really make economic sense.
And summary, if you are a highly organized gambler and you have winnings and good records of your losses,
sure to deduct them.
But like Victoria says, do not go out and lose $100 at the casino to save $35 on your tax bill.
And certainly do not go looking for scratch tickets on the ground like this guy on TikTok.
Every day for lunch, I come out, I pick up scratch tickets off the ground.
You pick up an aluminum can, you get what?
$5. This idea? $2.3 a pop.
I haven't paid taxes in years.
Apparently people do this all the time, but Victoria says it is fraud.
You might get caught.
Also, I think that guy is joking.
All right, we're at TikTok Tax Tip number two. This one has to do with pets.
For this one, we went to Goldburn Maynard.
He's a professor at Indiana University, a former IRS tax lawyer.
And also the owner of two cute little dogs.
Their names are D.D. and Patty.
They're a special breed. Cavalier, King Charles Spaniels.
So Lady and the Tramp.
Uh-huh.
But smaller.
How much do you think he's spent a year on two dogs?
Oh my God.
I don't want to even try to start estimated because I may cry.
Goldburn is not a big social media guy, much respect.
So I was not sure if he knew that according to TikTok,
he might be able to get a lot of tax breaks because of D.D. and Patty.
Check out these per related tax breaks.
If you have a service, you might dog has a tax right off.
Your dog, what are you talking about?
Yeah, you can get tax deductions for your pet food.
If you can prove to the IRS that your dog is a guard dog
and your cat serves as test control.
If you have a service animal, you make it a tax break under the medical expense deduction.
You can write off food, training, and vet bills, but I'll need a list of his hours worked.
Here you go.
You're all set.
Can you use your pets to get a lower tax bill?
In very, very limited circumstances.
So first, the idea that your pet is somehow a business expense.
We can dispense with that pretty easily.
Yeah, come on.
It's a pet.
Unless it's a real guard dog at a business or a dog actor,
the IRS isn't going to go for that.
But Goldburn says there are some circumstances
that would let a person out of business claim a tax right off for their dog.
And that gets us to the section's larger learning about the way taxes work.
You see, taxes aren't merely a way to fund the government.
The tax code is also a sneaky policy tool.
It's a way that lawmakers that Congress can incentivize certain behaviors,
like donating money to charity.
They let you deduct charitable giving from your taxable income.
They also incentivize home ownership and buying electric cars.
And there are tax breaks for certain groups of people.
Like for families, there's the child tax credit.
There are also special breaks for veterans.
And for people with a bunch of medical expenses.
Which brings us back to the dogs.
If you have a service dog, right?
You're an individual who is blind.
Or for example, has seizures.
And your dog is there to help one of those sweet ones who goes right next to you.
So you fall on it instead.
I love that idea.
Exactly.
Yes.
If you have that kind of dog and right, you have a diagnosis.
You have a medical recommendation.
You can qualify for a medical expense for that pet.
However, right?
In that case, it's technically not considered a pet.
It's considered a work in dog.
Right.
And these are going to be very limited cases.
Not the emotional support animal kind of thing.
Right?
You have to have an as-to-reason condition.
There's a lot of emotional support animals around where I live.
I'll tell you that much.
So those don't count.
Also, you are only eligible if your medical expenses meet a pretty high threshold.
So it's not really a thing for most people.
Which is something you could say about a lot of the tax advice on social media.
A lot of it points people towards these kind of niche deductions.
But for the vast majority of people claiming a bunch of deductions is just not going to be worth their while.
Because of what's called the standard deduction.
If you have filed taxes, you know this one.
This is what your tax preparation software or your tax preparer usually pushes you towards.
For most of us, even myself, right?
I end up using the standard deduction.
Yeah, even a former IRS tax lawyer uses it.
The idea of the standard deduction is that there's this certain threshold under which Congress doesn't want you to worry about saving all your pet food receipts
or you're losing lot of tickets.
It's not worth your time.
And it certainly is not worth the time of some IRS tax examiner.
So Congress gives you a get out of itemizing free card.
Rather than add up all your deductions, you can just take the standard one.
For 2023, that's $13,850 a person.
If you have fewer deductions than that, it's just not worth it to be fussy with your taxes.
Coming up after the break, the internet's favorite tax right off.
For big luxury vehicles.
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Alright, so we've been through a couple kinds of questionable internet tax advice.
Like reducing your taxable income through gambling losses and when your dog's expenses can be a tax write-off.
And what we've learned is that those things, they are real.
They're just so narrowly applicable that most people who try them might end up doing tax fraud.
Today's final category of TikTok tax advice, which is definitely the biggest category you'll see out there, is videos that encourage people, sometimes with a literal wink and a nod, to call their personal expenses, business expenses.
Our guide to that world, University of North Carolina professor, Jeff Hoops.
And where are we speaking to you from today?
So I am broadcasting live from the Tax Museum.
The Tax Museum is home to all sorts of tax related paraphernalia.
Little IRS trinkets, anti-IRS baseball caps, old political ads, cartoons.
And Jeff, he is the museum's curator. He's also the CEO. He's kind of the janitor too.
My office and the museum are co-located.
Yeah, the museum is just a bunch of stuff that Jeff has collected that he keeps in his office.
I talked to a lot of tax nerds in the past couple of weeks, but Jeff is by far the most into it.
And I called him up to talk about the undisputed, heavyweight champion of TikTok tax advice, the so-called G-Wagon deduction.
It has to do with this luxury SUV, the Mercedes G-Wagon, which is very big and very, very expensive.
Have you heard of the G-Wagon tax deduction?
Why do I have so many G-Wagon?
This is secret information that a rich keep very closely guarded.
G-Wagon can cost 200,000, but here's how it could save you tens of thousands.
It's $6,000, qualify the car for section 179 that allows business owners to write off the car as an expense.
So you can buy it.
Bobby, when I heard this, I was like, wow, do I need a G-Wagon?
What do we need to know about the so-called G-Wagon tax deduction?
The old G-Wagon tax deduction in the book.
Like the founding fathers gave it to us in the Constitution, actually, the fact of the matter is...
All right, what we're talking about here, as I mentioned, is business expenses.
And all kinds of cars can be business vehicles.
But the tax code views the sports car that the dentist uses to pop around between clinics differently than a delivery van.
It gives vehicles that seem like real work vehicles a special tax deduction.
But where do you draw the line?
Just says the rule Congress came up with?
Kind of boils down to this.
It's better if it's heavier.
Seriously, 6,000 pounds is where Congress drew that line.
And so they said, if it's a passenger vehicle, if it's a small little car, you can't take as much depreciation ever.
It's a big.
Yeah, the special little tax benefit Congress gives big cars has to do with this idea of depreciation.
And we know what depreciation is.
After you drive your car off the lot, its value drops and it keeps dropping the older the car gets.
It depreciates.
And this G wagon thing, it has to do with how depreciation gets accounted for.
If you have a lighter car, you get to right off the depreciation gradually over time.
But if you got a biggie that weighs over 6,000 pounds, Congress lets you right off the depreciation way quicker.
The year after you buy that vehicle, you can write off a huge amount of what you paid.
And that reduces your taxable income.
But the problem with the 6,000 pound line is that with cars getting heavier and with all these super luxury SUVs we've got now,
weight is not really the best way of dividing rugged work vehicles from everything else.
And so where this tick-tock video is coming in play is you can have a car over 6,000 pounds,
but that feels a lot like that sports car that Congress didn't want us to get as favorable treatment.
When it is a Mercedes, certainly it feels like that.
Why not some Mercedes?
So that is the so-called G-Wagon tax deduction.
And it is a real thing.
Though the deduction is less generous now than it was a couple years ago.
But the bigger thing to note is the deduction only works if you have a legitimate business.
And you need the car for it.
You can't just give a wink and a nod to the IRS the way some of these videos suggest.
And write off a personal luxury vehicle.
The big like tax evasion technique is to say that you're using something for business purposes that you're just using for personal purposes.
So to try to deduct things that are not being used to generate income or rather you're just using them for your own pleasure.
So that's fraud.
That's fraud.
One final thought to leave you with here today.
Tax law stands alone in this one really interesting and kind of funny way.
If you mess something up on your taxes and that means you've broken the law, you can actually use ignorance as a criminal defense.
That is not true in other parts of our legal system.
Which is to say now that you've listened to this episode, you've got a little less plausible deniability when it comes to those tax forms you might be mailing in right now.
Sorry about that.
Hey, the planet money TikTok that I mentioned before.
If you are on TikTok, I do really highly recommend it.
Are folks there put out fact-based but also really funny videos?
You can also find their videos on Instagram.
We throw them up there too.
This episode was produced by Emma Peasley with help from Willa Rubin who also fact-checked this episode.
Thank you, Willa.
It was edited by Molly Messick and engineered by Cine LaFraido.
I'm Nick Fountain. This is NPR.
Thank you for listening.
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