I am a self-employed contractor. My wife and I have a paid position with our church doing campus ministry at our local university. Our position is really all about contacting people and spending time with them. Thus, we expense pretty much everything that would fall under the category of contacting people (which is mostly food expenses).
Recently, my wife and I got a gym membership at the university (we qualify because we are alumni). We specifically got this membership because it enables us to go to the gym with the students we are contacting. If it were not for that, we would likely have foregone the membership entirely.
Because the membership is to help us at our position, is it a tax-deductible expense? I'd imagine being able to write off something like a membership to a golf club if it were necessary to schmooze clients and whatnot. Wouldn't this be similar to that, thus able to be written off?