Great event for an even better cause!!!

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

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-

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.

A little bit more on the Business Climate Survey and a little tax heads-up

Here is a nice 2 minute video about the survey results as described by Marvin and Company's Managing Director Kevin McCoy.

http://vimeo.com/20151192

Hope you all have signed up for the tax seminar coming up at the Troy Record. Thanks for all the support!

Actually one other thing - working through a lot of corporate returns right now and make sure you are making the right decision on whether or not to use Section 179 or Bonus depreciation (where applicable). I know there aren't too many companies out there that have taxable income over the past 2 years but bonus depreciation can create a net operating loss where section 179 can not - and if you had taxable income in the past two years maybe creating an NOL would be worth it and then you could amend your previous year's return and get some money refunded. I know this is pretty technical but your accountant should know all about this but if you need any help please don't hesitate to contact me at anytime.

Great article for non-profits...

Joanne Berry, Executive Director of the NYS Society of CPA's wrote a great editorial in last month's edition of The CPA Journal, in which she dives into the path that the CPA-non-profit relationship may be on.

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/205d12e6#/205d12e6/9

The Roslyn School District scandal is probably the Enron of school district scandals with about $11 million in misappropriations and fraud and has since laid the ground work for more state audits and more regulation. We have seen many of our local school districts end up on the front page of the "capital district" section of a local paper talking about how money was spent inappropriately and how internal controls did nothing to prevent it - and Berry asks the same question with regards to NFP's and their spending responsibilities.

I believe this article comes at a good time because of the economic difficulties many non-profits have faced over the past couple years and some of these struggles include layoffs which can really have a negative impact on a small non-profit's internal control. Especially in these times when everyone is hurting a little in the wallet, you want to make sure that your internal controls are structured in a way that even the smallest of departments can handle and that is something your auditor should be able to help you with - but if not, as always, please feel free to give me a call.