I am an electrical engineering consultant (self employed) helping a client develop an accessory for Electric Vehicles. I need to have an EV to reverse engineer some of the protocols, and to test prototypes on. It would be used for some amount of business related driving, but it would also be used for normal stuff (getting kids to school, groceries, etc.) and I'd want to keep it when the product development is complete (though there may be future products that use it as well).
For development so far I've used borrowed cars and rentals, which isn't ideal.
Since my primary business reason for buying the car would not be driving it, but testing on it, does that change anything for writing it off? For example, if I was buying some other machine to reverse engineer, car stuff wouldn't even be relevant. But I realize I am muddying things by driving it.
If I can write it off, how much can I write off? It sounds like cars have to be written off over the course of several years. Does that apply here as well? (If I had my way, I'd love to write the whole thing off this year.)
I'm not looking for specifics, just trying to see if I can justify the purchase, and whether I can reasonably use some of the money I have set aside for taxes to cover the cost. Thanks!
Update to clarify some things: First, perhaps "reverse engineering" has a negative connotation, but what I am doing isn't illegal, or even frowned upon. It's completely reasonable in this context. Let me give an example. Let's say I am designing a power adapter for a laptop (a reasonable thing for an engineer to do), but the manufacturer chose not to publish the specifications of their adapter. So I buy a laptop and an adapter, I measure the size of the connector and the voltage, then I make my own adapter using that information and plug it into the laptop to make sure it works. This cannot be done reasonably without buying the laptop and adapter. So it seems that buying those things would be a business expense (in my mind at least. I'm not sure if tax law agrees, which is why I am here).
That's what I am doing, but with an EV.
So to apply that to my actual situation. I am making an accessory for an EV that can not reasonably be made without having access to an EV. If I buy the car and never drive it, but use it only for taking measurements from and for testing my product on, it sounds like that would be something I could write off, is that correct? In that case, since it is not actually being used to move people or goods, it seems (to me at least, see disclaimer above) that maybe the normal car rules wouldn't apply, as I'm not, in this case, using it as a car, but just a piece of machinery to be interfaced with. To be clear, the primary impetus for buying the car is not to drive it at all.
Now, to continue my earlier example, if I legitimately need to buy this laptop to develop the adapter, then when I am done with development, what happens? Do I need to leave it untouched or throw it away lest I risk the wrath of the IRS? In the case or the laptop or the EV, it seems that not using it after development was done would be pointlessly wasteful.
Perhaps the answer here is that I can't write it off because that's the sort of thing that people would be too likely to abuse (like how, for the same reason, I can't write off the lost income from clients who don't pay, if I understand correctly). Fair enough, that's what I asked this question to learn. I am not trying to do anything nefarious here (if I were, I wouldn't be asking, would I?), but I do want to take advantage of opportunities to reduce my taxes if they legally, reasonably available.