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Thanks gator!

In Response To: Glad you asked this after tax season! ()

: 2. Without getting overly technical on the
: issue, to qualify, the item would have to
: have a function that would render it useless
: outside of your volunteer work.

Define rendering useless and define volunteer work.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with rural EMS systems that employ volunteers and first responders. We don't hang at the station or hospital waiting for calls. We are at home lounging with the family, we're running errands in town, we're in our bed sleeping while on call. We have a handheld or mobile unit that's on the nightstand or hanging off our belt monitoring the local fire and medical dispatch. If our area gets a 911 call we get "toned out". We jump into our own vehicles, drive to the firestation from wherever we were located and get in an engine or utility vehicle and run code to the scene. Once we're done we go back to the station get back into our own vehicles and drive back home and get back to whatever we were doing before. For medical calls we can respond direct to scene from our home as long as you have your own medical supplies bag. So if a watch is neccessary to measure vital signs on a possible call, it is neccessary to have one around all the time, on my person, unless I'm in an area where I know I would not be able to respond (such as at work 30 minutes away or out of town).

As for rendering it useless. I have not worn a wristwatch for at least 2 years. Now I will need to start wearing one again because of my volunteer work. Granted I have 2 other watches that I could easily start wearing but who is the IRS to tell me what kind of watch I should wear?

: 3. IMO, any watch (regardless of cost), would
: be treated more like an article of clothing
: required for work, but also useful outside
: of work. More like the suit and tie I'm
: wearing today.

What if you hate suits and never wear them outside of work and only bought them just because of the dress code at work?

: Bottom line, I wouldn't advise it unless you
: left the watch at the station or hospital
: when you were not volunteering.

I guess a solution would be leaving the watch in the medical bag all the time and buy a second one for the fire engine :-).

: I bill by the hour and don't think I haven't
: considered the issue, too! ;~)

HAHAHA!

Obviously I would not buy an Omega Speedmaster jsut for the sake of measuring vital signs so I think I have to agree that it would be a really long stretch trying to claim it as a deduction.