Cost of MBA may become tax deductible?

Parent Cafe
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<p>At least it is for this woman:</p>

<p>[url=<a href=“http://finance.yahoo.com/taxes/article/108550/nurse-outduels-irs-over-mba-tuition?mod=taxes-advice_strategy]nurse-outduels-irs-over-mba-tuition[/url”>http://finance.yahoo.com/taxes/article/108550/nurse-outduels-irs-over-mba-tuition?mod=taxes-advice_strategy]nurse-outduels-irs-over-mba-tuition[/url</a>]</p>

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<p>Music to my ears :)</p>

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<p>I saw that and I wonder if it can be applied to masters degrees in other professional areas. My employer will reimburse for grad degrees but there are lots of companies that don’t do that.</p>

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<p>An MBA is the easiest grad degree to get. It’s prestige is a holdover from when they were rare. And as another CC poster previously pointed out; You don’t go to “B” school for the curriculum, you go to make contacts. And that is why where you get your MBA from is the only importance.</p>

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<p>This is not true. Many MBA students return to b school as career changers, that is they had not taken any business course before. All would need a basic understanding in accounting, finance, micro and macro economics,global economy, statistics and business strategy. The curriculum is as important as the networking opportunities.</p>

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<p>When I looked at this years ago, the IRS’ position was that education expenses were deductible if they enhanced your ability to pursue your current career, but not if they qualified you for “a new trade or business.” I’d like to see the decision in the nurse’s case–maybe she already had a business.</p>

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<p>Perhaps she needed some documentation from her employer that the MBA would enhance her current career.</p>

<p>I think that it was in the mid-1990s when the IRS narrowed what you could get the deduction for along with the tax benefit that companies received when they reimbursed tuition expenses. I had three years of my undergrad and all of my grad paid for by employers. That included all of the core and liberal arts courses that had nothing to do with my career. In the old days, I guess the IRS didn’t care. At some point they did and we received bulletins with changed policies for tuition reimbursement. At that point I was done with undergrad so it didn’t matter. The graduate degree was in my career area so it wasn’t a problem.</p>

<p>I’ve seen some employees do an MBA in engineering with tuition reimbursement so I’d guess that it’s possible to do an MBA to improve a current unrelated career.</p>

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<p>Here’s the decision: <a href=“http://www.traveltax.com/Documents/RN%20Gets%20MBA-%20Deductible.pdf[/url]”>http://www.traveltax.com/Documents/RN%20Gets%20MBA-%20Deductible.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
It’s not as novel as the reports suggest–what matters is whether the preson was already performing the type of duties that the education enhances.
I took a deduction like this decades ago, but (to my surprise) was never audited, despite the size of the deduction. I thought I had a pretty good argument then, and this case confirms it, more or less.</p>

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<p>Thanks, Hunt. Yeah, this is really no change from what it has been for years.</p>

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<p>The publicity may mean that a few more people will try it.</p>