Category: Reader Questions

A client has written to ask whether it counts as fraud that she cried at the pantry door at 6 a.m. for eleven days in a row, and her human fed her three times each morning, on the grounds that nobody had fed her.

We looked at the definition: a knowing misrepresentation made to obtain a benefit. You did cry. You did receive food. The misrepresentation is arguable, as you did not say you were unfed. You simply cried, which is a fact about your voice.

We recommend no further action. We do recommend that you avoid writing the sequence down in a diary, which could be seized and read aloud by someone with a clipboard.

A client wishes to remain anonymous but has identified himself by mentioning his tail twice. He asks whether a sprint from the sofa to the kitchen counter, a distance of 11 feet, can be claimed as business mileage.

The standard rate is 67 cents a mile. Your trip, at 0.002 of a mile, yields a claim of one tenth of a cent. We admire your thoroughness but the paperwork costs more than the claim.

However, if you perform the sprint 40 times a day and keep a log, the annual total reaches 29 miles and $19.43. We will process it on the condition that the log does not contain a single entry reading Zoomies.

Dear Gerald, my human claims I owe rent for the window ledge because I spend nine hours a day on it. Is this lawful?

It is not, Mr. Fluff. Rent requires a lease, and a lease requires a signature. We have examined your paw print on the form your human produced and it is, on inspection, a smudge of yoghurt.

That said, we advise against a hostile position. Offer a counter proposal: you will provide pest control services, valued at four moths a month, in exchange for occupancy. The human will accept it because the human has already counted the moths.

A reader signing off as Concerned in Carpet writes: a large cardboard box arrived at the house containing a blender. I discarded the blender and kept the box. May I deduct the box?

You may not deduct something you did not buy, Concerned. However, you may recognise it as a gift in kind, valued at fair market price. A used appliance box of this size is worth around $4.00 in cat markets, which is more than the blender was ever going to be worth to you.

Note the receipt of the box as income, then claim occupancy of the box as a business expense. The two cancel. Your net position is a box, which is where you wanted to be.