this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
1550 points (99.1% liked)
Political Memes
11271 readers
1547 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
1) Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
2) No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
3) Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
4) No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
5) No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
But would not that depend on how OP's time is valued in this case? OP could argue that their expertise costs $14000/hour ($70000 over 5 hours). I am sure that they would argue the hour cost, I have not clue how the IRS handles something like this.
As I understand it, technically the "thing of value" is the script itself - because it doesn't have a clearly defined value you can get away with claiming some fairly crazy valuations.
There's a very similar tax loophole popular with the wealthy where you get a "great deal" on some slightly valuable art, donate it to charity, get it valued by an "expert" you know, who just happens to think it's worth many times what you paid, then write that off on your taxes. Basically free money.
Do you know if this expert has to have some kind of credentials? Or could John Smith start a non-profit, Jenny Smithy have James Smithens who is an "expert" say the value (of some object) is more than Jenny owns, have Jenny donate this object to John's non-profit and then tax $0?
(I know it technically can be done, but do you know if there is some threshold were it will be flagged? Writing of more than you own would be a flag and call for an audit but what about something worth $1000?)
They don't let you deduct the cost of your own labor ever. The property thing is the loophole (but after further research not a real loophole and they will nail you for it).
Yes, but ... if you use your own labor to create a product, and then donate the product, you can deduct the value of the product.
But my point is technically you can deduct the cost of the product. Lets say you knitted an Afghan that you can sell on Etsy and donated it to someone. You can only technically deduct the cost of the yarn, but you're getting away with doing the market value thing. Full audit would nail you for it but the IRS isn't staffed enough to call you in for one of those.
Would the IRS have a problem with writing of the value of the yarn or the "market value" of the product?
The value of the yarn is deductible if you make the product. If you sell the product to someone they can deduct the full value if they donate it while you pay income taxes on the profit. Trying to backdoor your labor as a deduction is what the IRS has a problem with because you're not allowed to do that.
Got it, thanks!