Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Great event this Thursday

More details at website posted below, but great event for Non-profits this Thursday at the Italian American Community Center. Hope to see you there!!!

http://acchamber.org/Events/031711-IRSRegulations.aspx

Monday, March 7, 2011

Great events tomorrow!

Great event tomorrow morning at Albany Chamber as part of the Small Business Council, which I am apart of. Here is the website to sign-up - hope to see you there:

http://acchamber.org/Events/031811-BusinessSuccess.aspx

Also, tomorrow night hope to see you in Troy for my personal tax seminar! Se my previous blog for information or visit the Troy Record website for details.

Hope to see you at both - what a great way to start off and finish up the day! Also hope everyone is getting around town safely today. Kev-

Friday, March 4, 2011

Hope to see you next Tuesday!!!!


Contributions 101

Sorry for not having posted in a while but the 3/15 deadline for Corporations is my worst deadline of them all. Attended a great charity event last night for the Colonie Senior Service Center at the Century House and it got me thinking about the rights and wrongs as they relate to charitable contributions. These types of events are wonderful and really make a tremendous impact on these organizations - last night I bet you they sold about 350 tickets to the event and the atmosphere was electric - congrats to Bill and Kristin Hoblock for putting on a tremendous event.

First, it is unfortunate but unless you itemize your deductions on Schedule A of the 1040 you will not be able to deduct your charitable contributions - not saying you should or shouldn't give because of this but you will get no tax benefit if you don't itemize.

The obvious stuff relates to documentation - keep as many receipts as you can for cash and non-cash contributions. If you bring items to the Salvation Army for example, it is always your responsibility to calculate the fair market value of the donation by using the charts that are available but you should document everything you give to them and how you came up with your tax figure. If you give MORE THAN $500 in non-cash contributions (in the aggregate) you are required to list all of the non-cash contributions that were made, to whom, when and what was given - these would be reported on Form 8283.

With regards to fundraisers - like the one I was at last night. Lets say you pay $500 for 2 NY Giant tickets - 50 yard line, front row seats with limo transportation to the game - the COST of which would be $750 - because you paid less than the cost value, you would receive NO deduction for your contribution. If you had paid $1,000 for the package, your deduction would be $250.

Another misconception out there is donated services. If I was to donate 10 hours of accounting services to a local non-profit and my hourly rate here at the firm is $200, I would be able to deduct $2,000 right? WRONG - there is no contribution for services as there is no way to truly define the fair market rate of those services, but I can deduct the mileage for me to drive there and any supplies I use in working there - but not the services themselves.

Another example that people I am sure get wrong relates to donating the use of their rental property - a week stay at your place in Florida. We have all seen these big prizes at events - someone gives their timeshare at Disney away - sounds like a great idea - get to see Mickey and throw-up on all the rides (I don't handle rides that well), the only issue is because you are not donating the entire interest in the property to the organization you CAN NOT take a deduction for it. Even if there are defined nightly room rates and the value is easily calculated, because you are not giving your property completely away, there is no contribution.

Just thought I would follow up last night's great event with some tips on what can and can't be deducted as I wouldn't want anyone to get in trouble :-)

A great read on all of this information is in IRS publication 526 and you can locate it on IRS.gov, along with a lot of other great information.

Thanks again for those who follow my blog and don't forget about our great tax seminar coming up next Tuesday, March 8th - all about personal taxes - check out our website for more information at www.marvincpa.com.