Expenses for unpaid work

ewan_husahmi

My wife is an actor, and sometimes takes unpaid work to help her friends with their projects. These are good exposure and help build a portfolio and contacts: these projects can and do lead to paid work, and that is a reason for doing them.

She is often out of pocket regarding travel and subsistence etc. Can she claim these as a tax-deductible expense, give that she is otherwise a professional actor? [For such unpaid work, very often the producers cannot afford to reimburse basic expenses.]

chrismac1

If she were my client I would claim them and if challenged argue that they were in principle little different from advertising, marketing, business development or other (fully claimable) speculative cost incurred in order to generate more business. In other words, disallow these costs and you also need to take some income out of the return!

ewan_husahmi

Thanks, much appreciated.