Worst Tax Shelter? Amway, Horses, or Drag Cars?

When we attended Amway cult meetings our sack of shit Platinum - and other cult leaders - always said if nothing else Amway is a good tax shelter because you can write off everything related to Amway. That is how most ambots make their income from Amway in the form of a tax refund by writing off Amway expenses against the income from their day job. Luckily our accountant refused to include Amway on our taxes saying she only deals with legitimate businesses not pyramid schemes. When it comes to tax deductions you don’t want to be screwing around. If you leave yourself wide open for an audit and you’re including all the Amway groceries and cleaning shit plus tickets to Amway functions and the related expenses of getting there, you may find yourself paying back what you scammed out of Uncle Sam plus fines, plus jail time. A good accountant lets their clients know when they might be leaving themselves open for a closer look. Ambots have been brainwashed to believe that hiring professionals such as accountants is a waste of their money. Money that could be better spent on Amway products and tools. Instead “counsel with upline” for your tax advice and what expenses can be written off.   

Yup fools taking advice from fools!

Pretty scary. And absolutely ambots in our WWDB line were taking this bad advice.

Here’s a recent post by Peter Reilly on the Forbes blogs where he again states that Amway (phony) business owners don’t do so well in tax court when the IRS audits them for the phony business expenses they claim. Well what else do you expect from phony business owners who pretend they’re big shots in Amway! However most of the blog is devoted to a horse breeder apparently an industry that the IRS audits as much as Amway IBO’s except the breeders seem to come out better than IBOs!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2012/04/22/drag-racing-and-horse-breeding-in-the-same-case-at-least-they-didnt-try-amway/

Usually after Peter writes about Amway IBO tax cases a few dumb ass ambots show up to preach their canned Amspeak responses to him and want to debate what a great business opportunity Amway is. They do whatever they can to discredit other sources that tell the truth about Amway including one ambot who left a comment that Peter had murdered his mother. That's gotta be a big shock when someone accuses you of a serious crime you never committed! But what else do you expect from an Amway asshole. Deny, discredit, distract. Whatever they can get away with because they have no morals and don’t give a shit about destroying other people’s lives. So far no ambots have shown up to bitch at him on his latest post but that may be because the majority of his post was devoted to other hobbyists.

Here’s links to a couple of other posts he’s written about Amway ambots going up against the tax man.

http://riles52.blogspot.com/2011/06/selling-soap-as-hobby-amway-ibos-in-tax.html

http://blogs.forbes.com/peterjreilly/2011/07/26/drag-racing-and-amway-fun-not-profit/

           

And of course no post of mine would be complete without cursing out my Amway upline so here it is:

Fuck you and the champagne horse you rode in on!

And you’ll have to read Peter Reilly’s blog to understand that one

Amway Tax Evasion Tip - Checks Payable to Cash

Whenever we attended an Amway meeting held in an auditorium where a Diamond was speaking we had to cough up ten bucks apiece. A mere price to pay for the knowledge and wisdom we were going to learn from them.

Yeah right. Rip off! Rip off!

This is the only company I’ve ever worked for that makes its employees pay for training. And I use the word “training” lightly. All the Diamonds did was gush about their wonderful materialistic lives and then show the board plan. They managed to get it done in half the time it took our sack of shit Platinum to show the board plan. And we’re paying to listen to this shit? You bastards all the say the same thing! Besides we get to listen to the board plan for “free” 2 or 3 times a week whenever the sack of shit Platinum holds a living room meeting at some victim’s house.

Usually Platinums were in charge of selling tickets at the door and they’d accept cash but they wanted checks payable to Cash. You’d also have to write in the name of your Platinum in the memo line in case the check bounced the Diamond would know whose ass to ride for the infraction.

They’d tell the ambots it was better to pay by check instead of cash because that way they’d have the cancelled check as a record to use as a business deduction on their taxes.

Hunh? Are you kidding me? Why don’t those assholes handling the door proceeds issue receipts? That’s how legitimate businesses operate. They issue receipts! That’s how you “might” have a tax deduction if you are actually running a legitimate business instead of participating in a pyramid scheme. A check payable to cash is zippo! No proof of nothing! Anyone can go to a bank with their check payable to cash and well, get cash. Probably not too many people know that checks payable to cash are not always accepted by financial institutions because their legality is kind of a grey area. Checks are supposed to be made payable to a person (or business). The check is then deposited into a bank account, the name on the check and the bank account its being deposited into must match or the bank employee will ask questions why you’re depositing a check payable to someone else into your account and probably reject it if there’s no good answer. You could have stolen that check! If you stick a check payable to cash into the bank machine it will almost always be rejected because the bank staff can’t question you about it. A person stands a better chance if they go inside to a teller and explain why they have a check payable to cash drawn on someone else’s bank account. Oh gee I stole it! This is because anyone who gets their hands on a check payable to cash can cash it because its not payable to an actual person. Checks payable to cash can be legitimate and simply a case of the check writer being unaware they shouldn’t be doing this just in case the check gets stolen or goes missing. The reason checks payable to cash may be rejected is due to the suspicion of possible fraudulent activity.

Hmm. Checks payable to cash. Possibility of fraud. Amway. Kind of all fits why the cult leaders want checks payable to cash.

But the real reason why at these functions where Diamonds show up to speak a few times a month insist the check is payable to cash is its tax evasion. The check is not made out to the person. Can’t prove who cashed it or more importantly who kept the cash afterwards.

The cult leaders also want checks payable to cash because multiple people may be splitting the proceeds. First off the rental of the auditorium must be paid so someone probably an Emerald or Platinum takes care of that. The rest of the checks are earmarked for the Diamond speaker as payment for showing up to bestow wisdom on the masses. More than likely someone below them on the pyramid who can be a scapegoat in case of an audit does the dirty work of cashing all the checks payable to cash and then handing over a stack of Benjamin Franklins to the Diamond.

There would be at least 400 ambots in attendance to listen to the Diamond bullshitter at meetings I attended so do the math on how much a Diamond can earn for 3 or 4 hours of scamming his cult followers. I can’t imagine it costs more than a few hundred bucks to rent a school’s auditorium or theater on a weeknight. If it was already going to be empty at least the school earns a few bucks. I bet some a dumb ass Platinum is given the honor and privilege of researching every high school and theater within a hundred mile radius and find the one that’s cheapest to rent. Maybe a few of those checks payable to cash are given to him as a bonus if he can find a freebie rental.....

Ambots bragging about Amway Tax Refunds

I had an ambot show up to leave a comment on this post:

http://marriedtoanambot.blogspot.com/2011/06/who-is-nelsen-of-infamous-wwdb-amway.html

LOL... she lost $35 000 in 11 years, that's just shy of $3200 a year... you all understand this is a product business and despite what you think about the business structure the products themselves are very rarely second to none. Even a deaf mute could sell enough product in amway to profit $3200 a year to cover those expenses, not to mention the tax return money if you even keep half assed books. I love how she fails to mention how much money she made from selling products and tax return income for running a home based business.... and if she didn't make her money back from sales volume and tax return, then I do not feel sorry for her.... she was just lazy and I know how much you all Love to hear that!

For a moment let’s try to put aside the canned Amspeak bullshit. This is typical of most comments that ambots leave on my blog.

Today’s post is about the part of this comment where the ambot mentions getting a tax return income based on running your Amway business. Seeing as how tax time is coming upon us I thought I’d revisit this whole get-a-tax-refund-if-you’re-in-Amway that is widely promoted by the Amway cult leaders.

This was the type of tax advice our Amway upline gave us that everything in Amway is a tax deduction and as this ambot clarified - they count Amway tax returns as part of an IBO income. What the upline really means is the only way an IBO can make money in Amway is to deduct Amway expenses from the income they earn in their real J.O.B and the only Amway income comes in the form of a tax refund. Our upline told us we’d get a big tax refund deducting all our Amway expenses - legitimate or not.

At Amway meetings I attended the Platinum and pretty much everyone else in the room would be bragging how things couldn’t be better and their business is growing. Then these same IBO’s claim they’re getting a large refund after filing their income taxes.

My Ambot was fascinated. He had no idea the secret to getting a tax refund - according to our upline - was to become an Amway IBO. Free money from the government!

Refund? Ha, that’s a laugh when your business is doing good.

Ambots can not grasp this concept.

If your business makes too much money (income) and you don’t have enough deductions (expenses) you owe money at tax time. Yay! Business is going great!

If you do not make much money and your expenses are higher that your income then the government issues you a refund. Boo! Business is the shits!

In other words it is pretty much impossible for an IBO to claim business is going great and they’re making lots of money and then talk out of the other side of their mouth about how they’re getting a big tax refund. Or as ambots refer to it: tax return income for running an Amway business.

Most Amway IBO’s in addition to being fake business owners work a dreaded J.O.B. and are employed by a company and receive regular paychecks. When tax time comes around those sneaky Amway bastards deduct all their Amway expenses (XS, Perfect Water, vitamins, food bars, hotels, function tickets, meals, travel, etc) against their job’s income.

That is the only way most IBO’s make money in Amway. By declaring everything they spend on Amway as a business expense and deducting it off their job’s income.

Lying little ambot bastards that they are! Tax cheaters!

Here is a big clue ambots! Unless you own a grocery store, items that you eat (groceries!) can not be deducted as business expenses in order to get a tax refund. When you’re an Amway IBO if you’re declaring travel and restaurant expenses on your taxes you better be showing some kind of Amway income profit on selling Amway products. If Uncle Sam catches up with you you’ll be up shit creek!

My husband and I run a legitimate business. We have a tax number. We have business license. We have insurance. We have accounting software where we create client invoices, and enter all monies received from clients and all monies we paid out in the course of running our business. We have legitimate business expenses that can be used as deductions. We back it all up on a CD and give it to our accountant at tax time. This is because we’re smart enough to hire the services of a professional who checks we entered everything correctly and aren’t missing information and ensures we are not leaving ourselves exposed and who also does their damnedest to make sure they write off as many expenses as they legitimately can so that we have less money to pay back to the government in what we owe in taxes.

Sure the hell beats “counselling with upline” and being told everything in Amway (XS, Perfect Water, vitamins, laundry soap, cleaning products, etc) is a legitimate business deduction!

For the record - our accountant disagreed with our Amway upline! Refused to handle anything Amway related saying “I deal with legitimate businesses not pyramid schemes.”

So much for “never question upline”!

If you are running a pretend Amway business and are taking your upline’s advice on filling out your taxes so that you can earn your money in Amway courtesy of a government tax refund check be prepared to end up in big shit in an audit.

When we were in Amway we were told if nothing else Amway is a good tax shelter. The taxman might disagree. Here is some more interesting reading:

IRS to Amway: The Party’s Over!

http://www.hiddenmysteries.org/conspiracy/conspiracy/amwaybush5.shtml

IRS answers for business or hobby and deductions. http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=169490,00.html

Peter Reilly’s blog post about Amway IBO’s in tax court.

http://riles52.blogspot.com/2011/06/selling-soap-as-hobby-amway-ibos-in-tax.html

Another post by Peter Reilly about taxes and Amway. This one is kind of interesting if you go to the comments. In typical ambot fashion anytime posts like this surface on the Internet the Amway rats scramble out of the sewer to battle the truth by coming out swinging with false accusations in a bizzare attempt to create distractions away from the truth about Amway. The first ambot who posts a response accuses Mr Reilly of murdering his mother!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2011/07/26/drag-racing-and-amway-fun-not-profit/

Peter Reilly’s Blog about Selling Amway Soap

As year end approaches and people start thinking about getting their paperwork and accounting in order for taxes, I’d like to point people in the direction of a couple of blogs written by one of my visitors, Peter Reilly. He’s written about the downside of being an IBO and claiming EVERYTHING related to Amway on your tax return.

Obviously brainwashed ambots will counsel with upline for their tax advice. Those upline bastards are usually full of shit and are known for giving bad advice. Too many ambots rely on making their money in Amway in the form of a tax refund from Uncle Sam by claiming their Amway expenses as deductions against their income from their regular employment. Not a good idea. Any questions regarding filing your taxes should be directed to an accountant with expertise in this area, not some upline ambot who encourages his downline to cheat on their taxes.

http://riles52.blogspot.com/2011/06/selling-soap-as-hobby-amway-ibos-in-tax.html

http://blogs.forbes.com/peterjreilly/2011/07/26/drag-racing-and-amway-fun-not-profit/

The Lunch Box

Last year - or maybe it was the year before, time flies past so fast for me - some friends gave me a designer lunch box for my birthday. Interesting choice especially since I haven’t worked an outside job for a long time and have no need to pack a lunch anywhere. I’m not sure if it was a joke or maybe they were trying to tell me something? Hmmm. Oh well, its the thought that counts. I pretty much forgot about it.

A few days ago I was going out long enough over mid day and I thought I might get hungry so I decided I’d pack myself a snack and put it in a lunch box. I figured I must still have one or two lunch bags hanging around from my working days but I couldn’t find them. Then I spotted the new one my friends gave me in the cupboard where I keep flashlights and candles. Ah ha! So that’s what happened to it! I clipped off the tag still held on by a zap strap - its called Fit Fresh. Has a website too. http://www.fit-fresh.com/ Big enough to hold an ice pack, a slice of pizza left over from the night before, and a can of 7 Up. Actually had plenty of room left over for more food but that was all I was taking with me.

Off I go around 11:30am with my lunch bag packed like I’m heading off to work!

Then it got me thinking about ambots who leave comments on my blog and on other bloggers pages. In addition to being told we didn’t try hard enough and that we’re quitters and broke losers, we always seem to get accused of holding down a job, working for someone else, having an employee mentality, and similar Amway sneers directed at people who work for living and pack a lunch bag before leaving for the day.

Why do workers pack a lunch bag? The first thing that comes to my mind is that its probably cheaper than eating out. Packing leftovers from the previous night’s dinner or slapping a sandwich together, throwing in yogurt, a piece of fruit, and cookies, and eating in the staff lunchroom is more economical than going to a restaurant.

I bet most ambots don’t even pack a lunch when they go off to their job. Their mentality is they are “business owners” and therefore entitled to buy their lunch each day or at least pretend they can afford to buy their lunch everyday and keep that image up to others of being a successful business person. Yeah! Make those coworkers jealous! Lazy ass broke losers that they are!

Lets estimate $10 a day for lunch and that includes a beverage and tip for the server. $50/week or about $200/month. Egads! That’s already more than the average IBO grosses in a month. Totally ate up the business profits! Ha ha!

Another reason I can think of for people pack a lunch is to make healthy eating choices. Someone heading to McDonald’s or Wendy’s is going to get a greasy meal and likely pay over $5 for it. Both these chains have a dollar menu and you can buy a burger, small fries, and small drink for a buck a piece, maybe even dessert for another buck. Cheaper meal than a sit down restaurant but how healthy is that every day?

But you know what else those ambots are doing? They are holding on to the receipts for the restaurants they go to on the lunch breaks from their job and then write them off as business expenses on their tax return. They’ll claim they talked Amway during their lunch - maybe phoned their upline - and that its a legitimate expense.

Yeah, well good luck with that if you get audited and your boss can prove to the auditor that you were on the clock that day during the lunch hour period.

Occasionally my husband and I eat lunch out because we’ve had to take care of business in another town and were gone longer than expected and got hungry. We have legitimate business receipts to prove we were engaged in business related activities before or after lunch. The last time I can think of that we did that was about 2 months ago so its not like we're doing anything to grab an auditor's attention plus we have invoices to prove we were in that town conducting business if it came down to that.

Can an ambot on lunch break from their day job prove they were engaged in business related activities? I’d say probably not.

Contrary to what the upline brainwashes them into thinking, Ambots won’t be living a life of luxury in 2 to 5 years while residual income rolls in for the rest of their lives.

Save money. Eat healthier. Pack a lunch bag.

When it comes to Amway there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

The Taxman’s Gonna Catch Some IBO’s!

Our upline gave us shitty advice about everything under the sun but perhaps the worst advice that could have had severe repercussions is that everything in Amway is a tax deduction. I figured out pretty quick that the upline meant the only way an IBO can survive in Amway is to deduct their Amway expenses from the income they earn in their real J.O.B. Our upline told us we’d get a big tax refund deducting all our Amway expenses - legitimate or not.

I’ve sat in enough Amway meetings where the Platinum or someone else in the room is claiming that things couldn’t be better, their business is growing, and then in the next sentence these same IBO’s claim they’re getting a large refund after filing their income taxes.

My Ambot was transfixed. He had no idea the secret to getting a tax refund - according to our upline - was by becoming an Amway IBO. Free money from the government! All these years our accountant balances our income and expenses to a point where hopefully we don’t owe money or as little money as possible to the government. Refund? Ha, that’s a laugh when your business is doing good.

Ambot’s not good with money (which is why we’ve had an accountant for many years) so I put it simply so he could grasp the concept.

If our business makes too much money (income) and we don’t have enough deductions (expenses) we owe money at tax time.

If we do not make much money and our expenses outweigh the income then we get a refund.

In other words it is pretty much impossible for an IBO to claim business is going great and they’re making lots of money and then tell us they’re also getting a tax refund. Uh, that would tell me business ain’t going as great as they claim. Or they’re cheating on the taxes.

They’re lying about one or the other. But then that’s what IBO’s are trained to do by their upline: LIE!

In our legitimate business we have legitimate expenses that can be used as deductions. In the pretend Amway business we better not even dare claim anything Amway related or we could end up in big shit in an audit.

When we were in Amway we were told if nothing else Amway is a good tax shelter. The taxman might disagree. I found some interesting reading here:

http://www.hiddenmysteries.org/conspiracy/conspiracy/amwaybush5.shtml

The couple described in the article had employment income as well as being Amway IBO’s. They had lots of Amway expenses. Deduction City! However Uncle Sam got suspicious after giving these Amway IBO’s yearly refunds. What kind of business are they running where they’re not turning a profit after all this time? Time to look into this a little futher. Oops. Caught. Time to pay back the taxman for all those refunds while “building your business”.

In this article the couple were unable to explain why they kept going to Amway functions year after year when clearly they weren’t learning how to recruit more IBO’s and sell more Amway products. The couple did not seek out a third party to ask for advice on how to increase their business. They probably just “counselled with upline” on that one! The IRS determined Amway was more like a social club for them than a legitimate business.

Its probably a good guess that other countries have similar tax laws. You can’t keep showing losses on your business and getting tax refunds. That turns the Amway social club from owning a pretend business into “how to earn money off the government” by getting tax refunds claiming Amway “business expenses”. Probably what screwed up this couple was that they also had employment income outside Amway and used their Amway purchases as deductions to offset their employment income.

Of course many people have a J.O.B. in order to fund their expensive Amway social club. Not too many people quit their J.O.B. to do Amway exclusively because they can’t afford to. Ah tax shelter. Here we come!

Yeah keep doing that. You’ll be paying that tab eventually. The Internet has stories of IBO’s getting cracked down by the taxman for submitting Amway deductions to lower their real employment income. I realize that not too many IBO’s think about getting an accountant and professional advice when it comes to filing their taxes because they trust what their upline tells them. Bad idea! Ambot and I never used any Amway expenses on our tax return. Our accountant said no because we weren’t earning money in Amway and she didn’t want to expose us to an audit.

Here’s a little hint. Unless you’re operating a restaurant business you can not use groceries as a tax deduction. Read into that Perfect Water, XS Energy drinks, Nutrilite Vitamins, food bars, etc. If you put it in your mouth and consume it that makes it a grocery item. Not deductible! Not even if you try to claim it as samples to hand out to prospective customers. You can’t hand out (or more likely self-consume) hundreds of dollars of “samples” every month and not make any sales.

Here’s my best advice at tax time. Don’t “counsel with upline” when it comes to taxes because their advice runs something along the lines of if you don’t make a profit on Amway sales you’ll make that profit in a tax refund. Unless you like getting audited, see a professional accountant for advice on what you can legitimately claim as deductions.

Tax Deductions!

Our upline told us that everything to do with “the business” is tax deductible. 

Our upline even said our dog food is tax deductible because our dog guards the house where we have Amway meetings.

We were told that all Amway products we buy are tax deductible. I seriously doubted that and so did our accountant whose services we use for our legitimate business. The upline made it sound like anything and everything about Amway products and tools is tax deductible and we’ll get our money back in the form of tax refunds and therefore its all free. 

For some people this makes it easier to keep shelling out money if they’re given the hope that it will all be returned at the end of the year in the way of a tax refund. To hear upline tell it, this business, if nothing else, is a great tax shelter.

Uncle Sam might disagree.

This is a good example of why its not a good idea to take everything the upline says as gospel truth especially in areas that aren’t of their expertise. A person working a J.O.B. as an unskilled laborer or slinging burgers at McDonald’s while walking the Amway path to financial freedom is probably not the best expert on what is and what is not a legitimate tax deduction especially if they've never hired the services of an accountant.

Fortunately Ambot took the counsel of our knowledgeable, experienced accountant instead of his upline when it came to acceptable tax deductions.

As our accountant tells it to us - save all receipts except for the grocery bills and she can write them off. That would disqualify anything edible/consumable that Amway sells as a tax write off.

That was contradictory advice from our upline. They told us to buy Amway drinks and food bars and vitamins because they have high PV/BV.

The same items our accountant tells us that we can not claim on our tax return because they fall under the grocery category.

Use your own judgement on this one. Fortunately Ambot did. Our upline were a bunch of scammers and liars as they shoved the Amway business opportunity down everyone's throats. I disregarded everything they said anyway and am sure glad I didn't listen to them try to scam us about legitimate tax deductions.