3 ms·

Are you saying that if you donate your time without pay you would still be taxed as though you _had_ been paid?

hobs 1y ago
No, that's not how it works in the USA - apparently this person wants a tax deduction for their voluntary contribution as if it was a financial contribution to a non-profit which is tax deductible.
- cyphar 1y ago
  On the flip side, contributions have financial value, otherwise what are we all doing here? I don't think they want a tax deduction necessarily, they're just pointing out that because of how voluntary labour is valued by the tax system it is rational to want to be paid for contributing to non-profits instead of doing it for free. If you spent N hours working and donated your $X*N salary to a non-profit, you'd get a tax deduction for that amount. However if you instead spend the same N hours contributing, you get literally nothing even though the work should be valued at some fraction of $X*N if not the same value (and some laws such as campaign finance limits do treat volunteering of this form to be valued at standard rates even if it's unpaid, so this is not without precedent). I don't think a tax deduction like that would work (everyone will pretend to be donating 16 hours of volunteer time a day), so it's back to charging for your work as a contractor.
  - hobs 1y ago
    I just tell people to charge the non-profit a reasonable non corp rate. That would just be paid work for a non profit, which (the company) is already tax exempt.
mystraline 1y ago
You know thats not what I'm saying. I'm making a larger comparison that most of our resource, which is labor, cannot be donated at the mean cost per hour and taken off of taxes. However rich people, whose primary resource is money, CAN be taken off on taxes. Rich people have ways they can donate and shed their tax burden. Whereas average working people cannot volunteer professional labor and take off the same equivalent.
- afandian 1y ago
  No I don't! I know next to nothing about the American tax system. In fact it would surprise me if you _could_ somehow reduce your tax burden by doing vountary work.

hobs 1y ago

No, that's not how it works in the USA - apparently this person wants a tax deduction for their voluntary contribution as if it was a financial contribution to a non-profit which is tax deductible.

cyphar 1y ago
On the flip side, contributions have financial value, otherwise what are we all doing here? I don't think they want a tax deduction necessarily, they're just pointing out that because of how voluntary labour is valued by the tax system it is rational to want to be paid for contributing to non-profits instead of doing it for free. If you spent N hours working and donated your $X*N salary to a non-profit, you'd get a tax deduction for that amount. However if you instead spend the same N hours contributing, you get literally nothing even though the work should be valued at some fraction of $X*N if not the same value (and some laws such as campaign finance limits do treat volunteering of this form to be valued at standard rates even if it's unpaid, so this is not without precedent). I don't think a tax deduction like that would work (everyone will pretend to be donating 16 hours of volunteer time a day), so it's back to charging for your work as a contractor.
- hobs 1y ago
  I just tell people to charge the non-profit a reasonable non corp rate. That would just be paid work for a non profit, which (the company) is already tax exempt.

mystraline 1y ago

You know thats not what I'm saying. I'm making a larger comparison that most of our resource, which is labor, cannot be donated at the mean cost per hour and taken off of taxes. However rich people, whose primary resource is money, CAN be taken off on taxes. Rich people have ways they can donate and shed their tax burden. Whereas average working people cannot volunteer professional labor and take off the same equivalent.

afandian 1y ago
No I don't! I know next to nothing about the American tax system. In fact it would surprise me if you _could_ somehow reduce your tax burden by doing vountary work.