Dog Boarding Deductions

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
January 27, 2025
1 reply
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I run a licensed dog boarding kennel out of my home. There is a local 501c3 Rescue that wants me to board some of their animals but they can't afford to pay. Can I write the fees for boarding off on my taxes as a charitable donations?

MinhT1

No, you cannot deduct the services you provided for free to the 501(c)3 organization as a donation, because you never included income from these services as taxable income.

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ahetrick74Author

Can you expand further? I do claim income from the dog boarding business on my taxes. Are you referring to claiming income specifically for the non-profit?

Follow up - if I gave them a discounted rate but still charged, could I claim the difference on my taxes?

BillM223

As Minh said, you can't claim a write-off for income you never got. So even if you discounted the fees, you can't write-off the income that a non-discounted customer would have paid.

If, however, you have "hard" costs for these dogs that you are boarding (like dog chow, vet visits, etc.), you can deduct these. You should create a list of these hard costs as you make them and connect them to this non-profit. You should document this carefully, as any audit will want to make sure that you are not mixing personal expenses or your regular business expenses in with the contributions to the non-profit.

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