Cat Woman Beats IRS on her Charitable Tax Deduction, look out Batman

At the time you are reading this article, the IRS is still shaking the kitty litter from their feet.  Earlier this month, Jan Van Dusen made them cough up a fur ball.  The IRS painted her as a wacky cat lady trying to cheat the government out of its hard-earned taxes.  As a Fix Our Feral’s volunteer, whose mission was to trap stray cats, Ms. Van Dusen would trap feral cats, neuter them, and care for them until they can be adopted by owners or released…70 cats to be exact.    Ms. Dusen then deducted all expenses relating to the cats as a charitable tax deduction under section 170.

A few months ago, I wrote about this type of charitable tax deduction in  Serving as a Vounteer? You Don’t Have To Wait for Heaven to Collect Your Reward.  In order to take the deduction, you must have support for some unreimbured expense that you used to support a charitable organization.  In addition, you need a letter from the organization acknowledging your expenditure as a gift.

This doesn’t mean that you can go out and plant 200 trees and get a charitable tax deduction unless some organization acknowledges that this is a gift to the organization and in furtherance of their charitable purpose.

In the previous article, I spoke of how my wife and me use our horses for such a purpose.  We use them over 90% of the time to patrol for the National and State Park Services.  Not only do the Services provide a letter to us, but they train us in CPR, first aid, and we log in with a radio when we patrol.  We are in effect, the eyes and ears of the rangers.  The program is very precise and requires 12 hours of horse training per year.  We deduct 90% of our horse expenses as a charitable tax deduction because we use our horses almost exclusively as the mounted volunteer patrol.

The time to think about your charitable tax deduction is today.  Don’t wait until April 14th.  If you volunteer for an organization, determine what they need to further their charitable purpose and deduct whatever expenses you require to further it.  Your burden is to substantiate it with receipts and a letter acknowledging it as a gift.  Alway use a tax professional when making these kinds of decisions.

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