Planet Money - TikTok made me deduct it

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

TikTok, and other apps like it, are filled with financial advice. Some of it is reliable, some... less so. There are videos about running a business, having a side hustle, generating passive income. And also, there are a lot of tips and tricks, many of them questionable, about saving on your taxes. On this show, we run some of the greatest hits of TikTok tax advice by some bonafide tax experts. We'll talk about whether you can use gambling losses to reduce your tax bill, whether your pets qualify you for tax deductions – and we'll fact check the claim that all rich people own expensive Mercedes G-Wagons... for tax purposes. Along the way, we'll drill down on the concepts like taxable income and the standard deduction. And we'll ask why so many videos on TikTok suggest that you (fraudulently) categorize personal expenses as business expenses. Sometimes with a literal wink and a nod. This episode was hosted by Nick Fountain. It was produced by Emma Peaslee with help from Willa Rubin, who also fact-checked this episode. It was edited by Molly Messick and engineered by Cena Loffredo. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's Executive Producer. Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

NPR Plus is a new way to support public media and get more from your favorite NPR podcasts like Fresh Air. Sometimes I'll actually preface the question with if it makes you too uncomfortable to talk about, if it's too personal, just tell me. Here's the question. For behind the scenes content, bonus episodes, and more, sign up at plus.npr.org. This is Planet Money from NPR. 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 got a problem. I've been practicing tax controversy and a little bit of tax resolution for about 10 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 gonna 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 Bentleys, Jets, Rolls Royces. Lots of people with normal problems come to her too. But no matter who you are, she tries not to judge. Danielle Pletka 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 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 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 with this guy that doesn't file taxes. He never has and he never started. Here's a tax loophole that influencers use to save millions on taxes. Tax loop holes paying your own children within your business. You can pay your kid 12,000 bucks on taxes. And the IRS definitely doesn't want you to know about this. Okay, I think we got enough of that. Anyways, Victoria says all this TikTok tax advice could not come at a worse 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. There were people far before us, more creative and more intelligent. And so these are like Mickey Mouse schemes that aren't gonna 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 gonna 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. Hello and welcome to Planting 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, whew, did 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 deducted. We're gonna 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. There's a lot of stuff to watch out there.

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Every weekday we sift through all the day's news and bring you one big story in an easily skimmable format. So you become a mini expert on a major topic each day. Sign up for free at npr.org slash consider this newsletter. 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. Have you ever 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, a guy's talking to the camera

from a fancy desk, but there are so many other examples. How old were you when you realized your lotto 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. This gambling losses write off thing is everywhere. It's gotten 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 true. Here's the problem. Uh-huh. 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 gonna 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 gotta have good records. A lot of people, they don't go to the casino with their notebook. Um... And, you know, the casinos try to help you out. You know, you can track your activity through your gambling card,

but then a lot of people start playing in 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 losses saving you money on taxes thing is 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, right? Okay, go for it. Say you want to deduct $100 and you're in the 35% tax bracket. So you spend $100 to save $35. Well guess what?

Now you're at a loss $65. Right. It doesn't really make economic sense. No. In summary, if you are a highly organized gambler and you have winnings and good records of your losses, sure, 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? Five cents, this right here, two, three dollars 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 Dee Dee and Patty. They're a special breed, Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. So Lady and the Tramp, but smaller. How much do you think you spend a year on two dogs? Oh my God. I don't want to even try to start estimating

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, you might be able to get a lot of tax breaks because of Dee Dee and Patty. Check out these pet related tax breaks. If you have a service animal. I'm gonna use my dog as a tax writer. 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 pest control. If you have a service animal, you may get a tax break under the medical expense deduction. You can write off food, training, and vet bills, but all need a list of his hours worked.

Here you go. You're all set. Yeah. Follow me. Follow me. Follow me. Follow me. Follow me.

Follow me. 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 Goldberg says there are some circumstances that would let a person, without a business,

claim a tax write-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 homeownership 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. Oh, one of those sweet ones who like 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 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 working dog. Right. And these are going to be very limited cases, not the emotional support animal

kind of thing, right? You have to have a serious 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 your losing lotto 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 write-off for big luxury vehicles. You care about what's happening in the world. Let State of the World from NPR keep you informed. Each day we transport you to a different point on the globe and introduce you to the people In a stressful election year, we know that a good show, movie or book can feel like a sacred thing. At Pop Culture Happy Hour, we believe pop culture can be good for you. So we're here four days a week to bring you a book, movie or show recommendation to put you in high spirits. For a dose of old fashioned pop culture therapy, listen to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast only from NPR. therapy, listen to the pop culture happy hour podcast only from NPR. Listening to the news can feel like a journey, but the one a podcast guides you beyond the

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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 Hoopes. 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? One, two, three G-Wagons. Now why do I have so many G-Wagons? Why do all rich people drive G-Wagons? This is secret information that the rich keep very closely guarded. G-Wagons can cost 200,000, but here's how it could save you tens of thousands. Those 6,000 pounds qualify the car for section 179 that allows business owners to ride off the car as an expense. You can take the deduction even if you finance the car. So you can. 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, the oldest deduction in the book. The founding fathers gave it to us in the constitution. Actually, 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 bop around between clinics differently than a delivery van.

to bop 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? Jeff says the rule Congress came up with kind of boils down to this. It's better if it's heavier. 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 as if it's 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 write off the depreciation gradually over time. But if you got a biggie that weighs over 6,000 pounds, Congress lets you write

off the depreciation way quicker. The year after you buy that vehicle, you could 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 this TikTok 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. When it's a 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.

Our folks there put out fact- TikTok, I do really highly recommend it. Our 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 Sina LaFredo. I'm Nick Fountain. This is NPR. Thank you for listening. Presented by Molly Messick and engineered by Sina LaFredo. I'm Nick Fountain. This is NPR. Thank you for listening. We know you care about what you watch, what you read, and what you listen to.

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