I was having a conversation the other day and don't know the answer. If a guy bought a boat, puyt it into an LLC, and then got a couple of sponsors to support the "team", could it be operated as a business as far as deducting expenses and depreciating the boat? How much poker running, or racing would a person need to do? Of course there would be little revenue to support it. I am not sure that one could show that it would ever make a profit, but I don't know if that is even a litmus test.

How do all the stock car guys do it? Most of them have thier own company on the side of the car.

Just wonderin'

Prize money keeps them going

u can only operate at a loss for certain time then it's not concidered a real biz attemt I think

Maybe mixing it with a profitable business might work, take clients or potential clients, associates or partners on it regularly, you know to discuss business through the headphones and of course you have to eat and maybe something to drink with that as well as transportation to bring the whole thing where you can use it...

I don;t know just throwing it out there you might want to discuss it with your accountant on one of those rides!

This is what I do

If I take a client or potential client out on the boat I can expense that trip.

I just started a new electronics venuture that is boating related. It may or may not pan out but while I am working on it I can write off a LOT of stuff that relates to the boat as long as I can explaint it. Now that being said I do not write off much as I think that the savings are often times not worth the time lost in an audit....

I can tell you how it was done years ago, the boat was a seperate corparation like a rental property. The clients did not sponsor you they leased / rented the boat for a time the same as you would lease / rent a billboard on the roadside or office space. The boat was now a business and everything related to the boat just like a rental property was written off.

It's kind of funny this was posted as in my Xfuel drink blog today what I wrote about was sposnsors used to expect from the boat as compared to what we want from the gameing teams. All the extras that we handled for a client are above and beyonds and thus the boat is more like a marketing / pr firm than a race boat. That fact is the boat goes to PR events for the clients not to race.

This was a profit center not a write off, yes you did not always make money but you could if you wanted too.

Don't you need a USCG sixpack license as a minimum if the boat is used commercially ?
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The stock car guys have a tremendously larger amount of money that pours into their sport. It's also incredibly expensive to be the main sponsor of a car racing any of the Sprint Cup/Nationwide/Trucks, or any of the major Open Wheel teams. You can tell this year that they aren't getting as many sponsors as in the past by them having different cars all together from week to week at times. Even the small stickers on the lower fender of the cars are thousands of dollars.

The coverage, sponsors, merchandising, etc, all create HUGE paychecks for the teams, and they get even more to the sponsors the more they are in the public eye, obviously. You "might" be able to sponsor or campaign a Turbine Class boat for close to a full season on what some of the Nascar teams spend on one race weekend.

I think he was refering to local short track racing and small regional series where u can still make 50-100k in prize money per year

No money is exchanging hands from my customer to me that relates to the day of boating so no I don't need the license as I understand it.