does anyone write off the lease on their car?

[Perfectlap]

I was thinking about starting a company selling a few products and using the car in pics to sell the products on a website. Well the point of all this would be to maybe make some money with the side benefit of writing off a lease on another Pcar.

My pal does it for his business. he previously wrote off a $1200 a month Merc Lease and now he's doing it with a $500 amonth convertible M3 lease. His business is not related to sportscars at all so he's not sure if its ok.

Can anyone enlighten me on this?

[CJ_Boxster]

You can do this if the Vehicle is registered under the company name. I purchase a 1996 BMW Z3 (hated it!) afew years back and the guy did the same thing while he was making payments on it...wasnt a lease but same deal, vehicle had his company name, his name and his wifes name on the registration. I live in California by the way, Call your local dmv for info... they are really good about giving up that information.

[Perfectlap]

so you can do this on a purchased car too? not just a lease? hmm....

[GmanMD]

The car does not necessarily have to be registered under the company name as long as all the payments are made from the company and not personal funds (according to my accountant here in NY). With regards to purchase vs lease, it is much more preferable to lease a company vehicle vs. purchase as you are able to depreciate the whole cost of the lease as compared to only depreciating the car on the purchase of a theoretical $16k car. So if your car costs more than ~$20k, then it makes much more sense to lease. It is a weird quirk in the tax law.