Hey folks,
This Folding@Home project is one of the coolest projects I've ever had the pleasure of using my computer for. I generate about 4.5M points per day, so I'm very excited to be contributing to this amazing team.
Since I am volunteering hours of service, electricity, CPU and GPU power, etc, are there any tax write-off opportunities available? I would think this would be classified as either donation or volunteering, but I'm not quite sure.
I was hoping someone who contributes to Folding@Home had any experience with this. I will be doing the project either way, but I wanted to see if there were any other benefits.
Thank you!!
Tax Write-off Opportunities with Folding@Home
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JimboPalmer
- Posts: 2522
- Joined: Mon Feb 16, 2009 4:12 am
- Location: Greenwood MS USA
Re: Tax Write-off Opportunities with Folding@Home
If you send them money, I am sure it is deductible. (These days most folks can only take the standard deduction, but you can itemize if household deductions exceed $24,000)
I would not be prepared to prove to an IRS auditor how much my electric bill changed due to F@H.
I would not be prepared to prove to an IRS auditor how much my electric bill changed due to F@H.
Tsar of all the Rushers
I tried to remain childlike, all I achieved was childish.
A friend to those who want no friends
I tried to remain childlike, all I achieved was childish.
A friend to those who want no friends
Re: Tax Write-off Opportunities with Folding@Home
If you donate money to Folding@Home via Washington University, it is tax deductible.
Like Jimbo, I would not want to have to go into an IRS audit & try to back up a deduction for electricity or hardware costs.
Like Jimbo, I would not want to have to go into an IRS audit & try to back up a deduction for electricity or hardware costs.
Re: Tax Write-off Opportunities with Folding@Home
Ive always read that donating money is a tax right off but participating by running the software is not.
Re: Tax Write-off Opportunities with Folding@Home
The way to address this would be to ask the university users to put a Fair Market Value on the compute power delivered. They already have a point system in place that properly values both the GFLOPs and the speed with which the results are returned.
Now all they need is for some university economist/accountant to make a good faith estimate of what those points are worth in $ and write a statement to that effect that we could download.
It would be well worth their time. The invisible hand of Adam Smith would promptly push a great many idle computers out of the woodwork and into service!
Considering that many of us are doing this to help find a cure for COVID, I doubt the IRS would be too picky about the deduction, as long as people aren't trying to claim work done on computers they don't own and didn't pay to run.
Now all they need is for some university economist/accountant to make a good faith estimate of what those points are worth in $ and write a statement to that effect that we could download.
It would be well worth their time. The invisible hand of Adam Smith would promptly push a great many idle computers out of the woodwork and into service!
Considering that many of us are doing this to help find a cure for COVID, I doubt the IRS would be too picky about the deduction, as long as people aren't trying to claim work done on computers they don't own and didn't pay to run.