Posted by Bob Falcone on August 6, 2007 at 12:27 AM
I'm not a professional photographer, just a somewhat talented (well, maybe) amateur. I'm a firefighter by trade, and the brother of one of my crew members is a pastor of a small church. They like to project images during different parts of their services, and they asked if I could provide them with a dozen or so digital images for this. The choice of images is totally up to me, and they've agreed to sign a contract that the photos are not to be printed, distributed, etc. I plan on providing 72dpi images, so that anything they may get printed (everyone is susceptible to temptation ) won't look that great.
The church has a very small budget, so I proposed that in exchange for the images, I'd like a letter from them showing a dollar amount of the donation I'll be making. They have agreed to that, but now the question is: how much is a collection of images worth? Can anyone provide any guidance?
Thanks in advance!
I'm not absolutely sure about church donations, but our accountant tells us that the IRS only allows us to claim actual costs in our donations to nonprofits. I.e., for a print we get to claim the cost of paper and ink, but neither the normal retail of a print nor the actual money the nonprofit raised if it was sold at auction.
Check with an accountant on this one, but my instinct is that you would only be able to claim the 32 cents you paid for the CD used in delivering the images to them.
Posted by David Weber on August 6, 2007 at 12:01 PM
Bob:
I checked with my denomination's regional (presbytery) office on this. You can submit an invoice for your time, if you set a reasonable houly rate and document the time you spent photographing the scenes for the church, and for the CD you purchased for this project. You also need to state on the invoice that you are donating $(the invoice total) to the church. You also might want to search irs.gov for info on this.
Posted by Bob Falcone on August 6, 2007 at 12:25 PM
Thanks Hank and Dave....
Hank, I'm curious about your accountants opinion...does that mean that if someone donates a Monet to a charity, it's only worth the cost of the canvas? Doesn't seem reasonable to me. Surely there is some intrinsic value over and above the cost of materials?
Also, one thing I didn't explain well enough (my bad) is that I won't be shooting for the church. Instead, I'll be donating photos that are already in my collection. I don't know if that changes anything.
Posted by Ron Niebrugge on August 6, 2007 at 1:03 PM
Hank is right, you can only donate your actual costs. So if Monet was alive and wanted to donate a painting, he could only deduct the cost of the paint and canvas. Now I believe If you bought a Monet, you could deduct what you paid for it if you decided to donate it.
You got it Ron. Of course, if I owned a Monet, someone would have to do a Charlton Heston on me to get it: "You'll have to pry my Monet from my cold, dead fingers!"
Posted by Bob Falcone on August 6, 2007 at 1:19 PM
Thanks guys. The tax code works in mysterious ways....
Return to us is so minimal on our donations that we don't even bother to claim them on taxes. In retrosepct it has kinda "purified" our motives in our minds, taking away any financial incentive for doing so and leaving the pure desire to provide support for the things we believe in. It hasn't stopped us from donating, and in fact we do quite a bit.
In the most notable a local organization I believe in can get 1:1 cash grants to match local in-kind contributions, so they receive a cold, hard $150 from the funding source for every hour I spend shooting to document their efforts. It feels really good to be able to make that kind of "contribution" even if it doesn't make a 1 cent difference in our taxes.
Discussion
9 repliesThe church has a very small budget, so I proposed that in exchange for the images, I'd like a letter from them showing a dollar amount of the donation I'll be making. They have agreed to that, but now the question is: how much is a collection of images worth? Can anyone provide any guidance?
Thanks in advance!
I'm not absolutely sure about church donations, but our accountant tells us that the IRS only allows us to claim actual costs in our donations to nonprofits. I.e., for a print we get to claim the cost of paper and ink, but neither the normal retail of a print nor the actual money the nonprofit raised if it was sold at auction.
Check with an accountant on this one, but my instinct is that you would only be able to claim the 32 cents you paid for the CD used in delivering the images to them.
I checked with my denomination's regional (presbytery) office on this. You can submit an invoice for your time, if you set a reasonable houly rate and document the time you spent photographing the scenes for the church, and for the CD you purchased for this project. You also need to state on the invoice that you are donating $(the invoice total) to the church. You also might want to search irs.gov for info on this.
Hank, I'm curious about your accountants opinion...does that mean that if someone donates a Monet to a charity, it's only worth the cost of the canvas? Doesn't seem reasonable to me. Surely there is some intrinsic value over and above the cost of materials?
Also, one thing I didn't explain well enough (my bad) is that I won't be shooting for the church. Instead, I'll be donating photos that are already in my collection. I don't know if that changes anything.
Thanks for the info, though. Good stuff to know.
Return to us is so minimal on our donations that we don't even bother to claim them on taxes. In retrosepct it has kinda "purified" our motives in our minds, taking away any financial incentive for doing so and leaving the pure desire to provide support for the things we believe in. It hasn't stopped us from donating, and in fact we do quite a bit.
In the most notable a local organization I believe in can get 1:1 cash grants to match local in-kind contributions, so they receive a cold, hard $150 from the funding source for every hour I spend shooting to document their efforts. It feels really good to be able to make that kind of "contribution" even if it doesn't make a 1 cent difference in our taxes.