Legal Question in Business Law in California

Well, this is really a question for the IRS, but I can give you a couple of general policy-type pointers to use in a phone discussion with them. First, education expenses intended to prepare you for a new career are often deductible in the year paid. However, you may have to be enrolled in an "accredited" school. I'm less hopeful that the expenses could be deducted as business expenses per se. The general IRS rule seems to be that costs of prreparing to be in a business - researching purchase of a business, preparing business plans, talking to investors, etc. are not deductible because they aren't really costs of being in the target business.