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Why is it reasonable?

People are investing money into a business that they hope will be worth money in the future. Upfront losses are just part of that investment.

If I decide I'm going to retrain in a better paying field, should I be able to claim my college fees as an offset against future earnings?



If something is tax-deductible if it happened in the same year, but not tax-deductible if it happened in a different year, you end up with a very uneven system (and a lot of pointless gyrations designed to turn one into having the structure of the other).

For your personal situation, it is not surprising that there is IRS guidance on the topic of education and tax deductibility. The rules have changed several times in the last few decades, but some is deductible: https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/qualified... https://smallbusiness.chron.com/training-costs-tax-deductibl...


Of course having tax laws that account for events crossing time periods is reasonable.

You still haven't explained how it is unreasonable to require companies to either 1) commensurately reduce their publicly reported profits or 2) pay the tax on the publicly reported profits if they want the public/market image of higher profits.





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