9 weirdest tax write-offs: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

These are pretty funny, I paraphrase here for those too lazy to click things:

Dog as Dependent: "I've got this problem, and I'm really starting to get nervous about it," the DJ said. "Several years ago, I was going to owe some tax, so I put an extra deduction on my tax return..... I put my dog on as a dependent."

I'm Depleted: "He had made some money being a sperm donor and wanted to know if he could take a depletion allowance," Albaum recalls. "I told him he really needed to be an oil well or something like that."

Hot Idea: a Pittsburgh furniture-store owner who, after years of trying unsuccessfully to sell his business, hired an arsonist to torch the place. The insurance company paid off to the tune of $500,000, which the owner dutifully reported on his income tax return. However, along with taking the proper deductions for the building, its contents and the usual business expenses, he also deducted a $10,000 "consulting fee" he had paid the arsonist.

Security Dog? "I had a guy come in one time wanting to know if he could deduct the cost of his dog food. His reasoning was that his dog was security for his house, therefore the dog food became a security expense," Howard says.

For the Religious Types: It seems the client had accidentally lost his dentures when they fell in the toilet and had claimed them on his taxes as an act-of-God casualty loss.

Link: 9 weirdest tax write-offs: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.