When tax season comes around, many people are looking for any way possible to get some personal deductions whether that entails business, educational, or deducting legal fees. The problem is that, when it comes to personal expenses, there are a lot of restrictions and unsuccessful claims that do not get deducted. Deducting legal fees, however, is kind of like a case by case situation. The problem with that is that there is no specific, set criteria in place to determine the deductibility of legal fees. The best thing to do would be to start talking with your accountant about how you can best approach the process of deducting legal fees and decide how you should handle it moving forward.
The first thing to consider when discussing how to deduct legal fees with your accountant would be to explain which tax deductible legal fees you have and what he thinks about them. you can usually sit down, lay out your expenses you feel are deductible, and your accountant will be able to help you understand which ones you may get tax deduction for legal fees as a result. It is always a good idea to have that deducting legal fees conversation with your accountant because of the wide range of experience they have with all types of tax situations.
It can often be the case that when deducting legal fees that you have to prove or document the severity of the matter in which you are looking to deduct. This is usually where the ‘case by case’ situation can go one way or the other, without much predictability toward a positive or negative outcome. The only thing you should worry about is deducting legal fees that warrant consideration by the government and leaving the rest alone, otherwise you may not be deducting legal fees at all.
