Romney family’s dressage horse-related tax deductions last year exceeded median USA household income

[riderinthestorm]

22. I can only tell you from my experience. The competitions we've run have made money

because we work like mad and do a lot of the work ourselves. Most competition organizers aren't in it to lose money. As far as a tax shelter, I guess there are some things you could shield but since I've been audited so much (and now have to have a tax attorney do our taxes for an enormous amount of money ) we simply never, ever think of how to cheat the system.

A stallion could conceivably (heh) make money with breeding. A performance horse mare might as well (they harvest her eggs and do everything via surrogacy which is possible in the sport horse breeding, not racing TBs mind you). But making money by competing as a sport horse? No way. Most competitions don't offer enough prize money to reward anyone for their time and cost to get there.

For us, prize money isn't our main goal in competing although that's always nice. FWIW, we've NEVER made enough in prize money to match our expenditures and we're one of the more "successful" ones out there. We compete because its akin to advertising for us - it demonstrates the capabilities of the trainer (brings in clients), it sells horses (the horse performs well, it brings in more money when its sold), it illustrates the care and level of quality in maintaining the horses (brings in more boarders for our business).

As a sponsored pair, it's possible Jan Ebeling and Rafalca are making some money from the corporations that pay them to "wear" their brands (think Nascar drivers). But dressage is such a tradition bound sport, there's no way they can have the logos splashed all over them during competitions so the advertising revenues would be similarly muted (you'd see a muted brand logo on the saddle pad perhaps). Back at the barn those logos would be prominent but at the top level shows like the rMoneys are attending, the stabling is severely restricted to prevent doping of the animals and to ensure their security so the regular Janes of dressage fandom world would never see that.