Hi folks! I sent this to Jeanette privately and decided to post it here as well:
---------- Forwarded Message ----------

Hi, Jeanette! I've been racking up compuserve charges as well-- plus long
distance charges to boot. (I'm in rural west Tennessee) I'm hoping that with the
change in rate structure on CS, that will help. [Compuserve is changing to a
rate structure virtually identical to America OnLine--especially with respect to
email charges]

I DO deduct my online expenses as a professional expense for my LC business, and
have done so as volunteer expenses (charitable expenses) for my LLL work. I used
to be on Prodigy a few years ago (before IBCLC) and spent HOURs answering bf
questions as an LLL Leader and always counted those hours on taxes. Now that I
have an LC business, I count them as business expense. I don't see it as any
different than buying a reference book. I have never asked anybody official
about doing this, but it seems to fit within the parameters of the tax
guidelines. It might be a little worse if we were using CS for anything other
than email right now, but in that circumstance, I would just deduct what is a
business percentage.

Hope this helps!
Melissa Vickers, IBCLC and LLLL
75472,1357