Folding Forum

Can this in anyway qualify a company for a tax break. I'm looking for away to approach my work at the corporate level to put this program on our computers to run every night when we are gone since we never shut any of our computers off. We are a corporation of over 190 car dealerships and some other small companies and the corporate people are very touchy and normally against running anything on our computers. So, I'm looking for a way to give them incentive to run this. Should be a considerable boost to the program if I can get this going. 30 computers or more x 190 dealerships, plus all the other smaller companies. If anyone could give me any info on this it would b e much appreciated. Thank you.


Jason Burns
Honda West

Hello Waldoe, welcome to the forum.

The short answer is no, F@H is not tax-deductable (in the US). If you want a longer explanation, just ask.

If you would like to make a tax-deductable donation to Stanford, and have it apply to Folding@home, see this link: http://folding.stanford.edu/English/Donate

There are several entries in the FAH WIKI for helping to promote FAH with large organizations, and some here in this forum as well. Try the search tool in each (links above). If you have difficulty tracking them down, again, just ask.

You say (not in the US). So yes a longer explanation would be helpful. Do you mean it is in other countries?

Waldoe wrote:You say (not in the US). So yes a longer explanation would be helpful. Do you mean it is in other countries?

Don't know that one. I live in the US. Where are you?

Waldoe wrote:Can this in anyway qualify a company for a tax break.

The answer is even simpler for a business than for an individual.

As a business, you're taxed on your profits and you get to deduct your expenses. (And I'm sure that increasing your expenses isn't going to be viewed as a good idea by your company.) One way or another, you when you get a tax benefit, you have to show that you spend money for a good cause.

For an individual, you cannot deduct your expenses. If you buy computers or extra electricity, the tax man assumes you're going to use them partly for a donation and partly for personal use, and since you can't prove what part is personal use, they simply assume it's all personal use and there's no deductions allowed.

Warning: I'm not a tax expert, so do check this information with somebody who really knows the answers.

I read the Donate page again (hadn't done that in a while). Stanford has a Tax ID you can use against the donation. Pande Group, who runs FAH does not have a Federal (US) Tax ID. Could make a big difference there.

7im wrote:Stanford has a Tax ID you can use against the donation. Pande Group, who runs FAH does not have a Tax ID.

I don't think they need one, they're part of Stanford and mostly funded by grants.

However, a tax-exempt can have taxable subsidiaries. I'm not exactly sure how they account for Stanford Shopping Center but the property manager is Simon Property Group, a REIT.

Donations to F@H (be they monetary, through the purchase of dedicated hardware, or money to pay for the powering of hardware to run computers with F@H outside normal operating hours) are not tax deductible in the UK, and I'm fairly sure (but not 100%) that the same can be said for the entire EU (as F@H is not an EU-based charitable organisation, or indeed a charity at all). You still haven't told us where you are located though, so I'm just trying to tell you as much of the globe as I can