ow would you like to get a discount of 14 percent to almost 20 percent on your meals and entertainment expenses? If your meals and entertainment expenses were deductible, a $100 meal would cost only $86 if you're in the 28 percent tax bracket.

How? Tax laws allow you to deduct half of your meals and entertainment expenses if they're business-related. Any expenses for food and drink provided under circumstances considered favorable to a business discussion, or when a business discussion is held, can be deducted. If you're self-employed, you can deduct them as part of your adjustments to income. If you're an employee, you add them to your miscellaneous deductions.

Therefore, the custom of entertaining business clients or potential business clients with food and drink in restaurants and hotels converts your personal feeding frenzies into deductible expenses. When you go out with friends or relatives for a meal or drink, do you ever pick up the check? If they are or could be potential clients or customers for your business, and you discussed business with them, then that check would be deductible.

Even if you don't talk business at the meal, it will be deductible if the meal follows or precedes a bona fide business discussion. Recognize that no actual business need come from the meeting so long as business was discussed. Now don't use this method as a way to alternate who pays for lunch or dinner with your best friend. Any "regular" exchange of meal checks, if caught by the Internal Revenue Service, will be disallowed as a sham in an audit and subject you to fraud penalties. However, don't hesitate to deduct legitimate expenses.

Moreover, not only can you deduct meals, but you can also deduct business entertainment expenses. Money spent for business entertainment, amusement or recreation can be deducted if you can show the expense:

Examples of potentially-deductible expenses include entertaining guests at nightclubs, theaters, sports games or even vacation trips. In one case, an anesthesiologist was allowed to depreciate his fishing boat and deduct the expenses for entertaining doctors on the boat who were his referral sources.

For meals and entertainment, you must substantiate the following:

You must have a receipt or other documentary evidence for meals or entertainment expenses of $75 or more. Currently, for expenditures of less than $75, you do not need a receipt. Fully acceptable substantiation would include a diary or written planner in which you enter the above descriptive information. Those diary entries are all you would need. Even in an audit, the entries are complete substantiation under the law.

While most meals or entertainment expenses can only be deducted for half of the cost, certain meal and entertainment expenses remain fully deductible:

Expenses treated by an employer as compensation to an employee;

Expenses reimbursed under an "accountable plan;"

Expenses incurred for recreational or social activities provided by the employer for the benefit of its employees. These might be the annual company picnic or holiday party;

Expenses for goods, services and facilities made available to the general public, such as promotional tickets or customer samples;

Expenses related to the ticket package costs for sporting events arranged primarily for the purpose of charitable fund-raising.

The deductions for meals and entertainment allow you substantial opportunities to convert your personal expenditures into business deductions.

Do not fail to claim them and do not fail to keep them because of lack of adequate substantiation. In the 31 percent tax bracket, $100 worth of football tickets costs you $84.50. No matter how much money you're making, it would be worth $15.50 in tax savings to spend 30 seconds noting the name of your business clients and the business discussion on the back of your ticket stub.