[Rob Hood]

What do you guys/gals spend for your annual racing budget? I'm interested in knowing what it costs to race per event. Things like entry fees, fuel, tires, lodging, food, etc. I'm trying to plan a budget to present to the Finance Committee (wife) so she has an idea what we need to spend. I am not including any expenses relating to initial vehicle purchase or preparation.

I am using a value of 10 races in a season, some local, some not. I do realize that I may end up in a region that could have more or less races, so I just decided to use 10 as a nice even number.

[CMC#5]

Writing off racing expenses is a little tricky. You need to be able to show intent to make a profit, and you need to actually show a profit one of every three years. If you get audited and can't prove you had reasonable expectation of making a profit, you get gacked.

The easiest way is to convince a "sponsor" (someone with a legitimate business that turns a profit) to use you as "advertising". If they give you money, they can write it off. So they get back from the gov. whatever they paid you times their marginal tax rate. So, it still costs them money, just not as much, right? So here's where it gets really twisted: say they give you $1k, and say they have a 30% marginal tax rate, so they really gave you $700. Now you give them $700 back. Net net, they broke even, you made $300, and as long as uncle sam can never prove the reverse transaction, everything is cool. Gotta love white collar crime huh? (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)