A team of professional hockey players can run up a pretty big meal tab — so big, in fact, that Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs is fighting the Internal Revenue Service in US Tax Court for the right to deduct the full cost of feeding Zdeno Chara, Tuukka Rask, and their teammates during road trips.

The case may involve burly athletes and what court documents describe as the “large portions” they consume at team meals on the road, but it could have broader implications for businesses that send workers off-site and foot the bill for food and beverages.


“A business retreat where all employees are required to dine together would be very similar,” said Philip Garrett Panitz, a tax attorney at Panitz & Kossoff, a law firm in Westlake Village, Calif. “The Bruins need to show that this is an ordinary and necessary business expense. I think they have a good argument.”

Jacobs’s legal action, first reported by Bloomberg BNA, is a response to a notice the team received in April in which the IRS claimed the Bruins owe a total of $85,028 in taxes from 2009 and 2010. In an appeal filed in July, the Bruins said the missing payments were the result of their practice dating back to 2007 of taking 100 percent tax deductions for team meals during road trips.

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