Buying a Spa for a Medical Purposes? You Could Get a Tax Deduction!

It’s easy to want to avoid dealing with taxes.
Lots of people get their taxes done last-minute, and some even try to get around the system illegally. However, if you’re investing a spa or hot tub for medical purposes, there’s a good chance you could (legally) get a tax deduction for medical expenses.
The IRS talks about medical expenses and deductions on their website:
Medical care expenses include payments for the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, or payments for treatments affecting any structure or function of the body.
While this all sounds straightforward, you need to take a few extra steps to ensure that your investment is one that the IRS would qualify as a medical expense.
Make sure you get an actual prescription from your doctor which states precisely why a hot tub or spa is necessary in treating your condition. You may be prescribed hydrotherapy or exercise routines in the water, but the IRS needs more than that to convince them the spa won’t be primarily used for recreational purposes.
For example, this Q&A on Intuit’s tax preparation site mentions a man who had osteoarthritis, and was prescribed pool exercises to alleviate his symptoms. The only way this patient was able to get a tax deduction was by building a lap pool indoors, and by including very specific equipment that deemed it medically necessary, like a special access ladder and hydrotherapy system.
You must also talk to your tax accountant or preparer. They will have a better idea on how to deal with your hot tub or spa needs on your taxes, and whether or not your particular state will have available deductions along with those from the federal government. You can also reference Publication 502 by the IRS to help you understand more of what they consider a legitimate medical deduction.
Before you go out and look at hot tubs, you’ll need to have done both of these steps (obtaining a prescription from your doctor and talking to your tax preparer) before you can be sure you’ll get any sort of tax deduction for medical purposes.
Once you’ve done that, you can safely invest in a hot tub or spa knowing that your body and bank account will both be better for it.
Have you ever received a tax deduction on a hot tub or spa for medical purposes?