this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. No politics
    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS

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Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 days ago (6 children)

Who gets to "write off" coffee? You can't deduct food as business expenses.

Also, pot is an intoxicant. You're being stoned, or drunk, at work is usually frowned upon.

The comparison to coffee is disingenuous. It's like comparing coffee to chocolate - chocolate has stimulants in it, but only an idiot would compare the amount of chemical effect to that of a more powerful stimulant like caffeine.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

For you, I'm sure a joint would put you on your ass, high as giraffe ears, for several hours. Presumably during this time you'd be powerless to do anything but eat funyuns and watch Adventure Time on mute while you listen to lo-fi versions of Phish deep cuts.

Xanax is an intoxicant. Do you know how many people are on antianxiety medications? Those people work too.

Cannabis is a medicine. Just because you can't handle it doesn't mean I can't. For me, I get more physically effected by coffee than I do cannabis- admittedly not much more, but still more.

Also you definitely can deduct food and coffee as office expenses, same as pens or file folders.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Are you in the US? Unless you're self- employed, you can not (legally) deduct food - including coffee.

If you're playing that game, maybe you'll get away with it, but maybe you won't. If you do, you'd better have your paperwork ready - receipts for everything you've deducted - because if you're audited not only will you be fined and have to pay back taxes on ask of the stuff you've been deducting against the rules, but they'll also question every legitimate deduction.

Now, if you have a medical prescription for pot, you can deduct medical expenses - although, if you're itemizing, you have to be spending a shit-ton on pot to equal the standard deduction. You can't take the deduction and itemize your expenses.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I am self-employed, and I have a qualified tax professional do my returns.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Self-employed is different. You can deduct all sorts of things the majority of employees can't.

So let's go back to coffee and pot. Coffee isn't deductible because it's a drug people are addicted to; it's counted as food. If you're eating edibles, then... maybe? If they're, like, pot brownies with some nutritional content, almost certainly. If they're gummies, IDK. Maybe they count as food as much as candy does. Alcohol has calories, and counts as food, probably as much because it's so socially ingrained as part of a meal any other reason.

If you're smoking or vaping, though, a better comparison would be cigarettes. Cigarettes and vapes are not deductible, even for self-employed. And your Xanax example - again - is deducted as a medical expenses, which only counts if you have a prescription.

Another example: you can't deduct homeopathic remedies, or other pseudo-science supplements. You can't deduct anything that you don't have a prescription for as a medical expenses. You can't deduct acupuncture, because it's not officially recognized as a legitimate medical treatment. You can't deduct massages, unless you can get a doctor to actually prescribe you a message, like for PT.

So, going back to your original post: for self-employed, coffee is deducted as a food, not a medicine, and comes out of a daily allowance. Cigarettes can't be deducted as a food or a medicine, and so aren't deductible. And unless you have a prescription for pot, or are buying edibles that you're deducting out of your meal allowance, you can't deduct it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

It goes in office supplies duh

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