Don’t Let High Fuel Prices Stop You From Volunteering
Author: Nick
Category: Money
Topics: energy, taxes, transportation, work
If it seems like every article here is related to gas prices lately, that’s because the price of gas influences so much of what we do with our puny American lives. Want a vacation? Need gas. Want to work? Need gas. Want to drive downtown and pick up a few hookers? Need gas. Well, here’s another one: want to volunteer to help others in your community? Need gas. And unfortunately for a lot of those on the receiving end of volunteer work, high gas prices are pushing some people to reduce their hours spent volunteering or to stop altogether.
While every type of volunteer—from scout leaders to soup kitchen operators—are feeling the pinch at the pump, there are many less fortunate folks out there who need the help of unpaid, unreimbursed volunteers just to get by. And when volunteering includes lots of driving—perhaps taking patients to required medical treatments, or delivering food to shelters—the price of fuel can greatly impact a person’s ability to be generous. Worse yet, with the price of everything going up, more and more people who have never needed a helping hand are finding themselves in positions of need. Put together, that translates to more needy, but fewer volunteers to serve them.
Having driven over 1,000 miles this year alone to perform volunteer work (including 450 miles this past weekend), I have a great appreciation for the hardships volunteers are enduring due to high gas prices. What I don’t have is a lot of sympathy for their excuses if they choose to cut down or quit their volunteering. That’s because Uncle Sam is more than happy to help you pay for your gas that you use in the course of your volunteer work.
In case you don’t already know, mileage incurred that is directly related to volunteering for qualified charitable organizations is tax deductible. For 2008, you are allowed to deduct 14 cents from your taxable income for every mile you drive for charity. So if you drive, say, 2,000 miles a year for charity in a vehicle that gets about 30 miles per gallon, you’ll pay $280 for gas priced at $4.20 a gallon. But if you take the time to carefully log your mileage each time you take a trip for volunteering, you could deduct 14 cents for each of those 2,000 miles, or $280. Isn’t that nice how that math worked out!
While I’ve tried to convince others I volunteer with to log their mileage for the tax deduction, many of them choose not to—even if they itemize their deductions anyway—because it’s “too much trouble.” On the contrary, logging volunteer mileage is incredibly simple:
- Create a mileage log book. Take a small notebook, and throw it in your glove compartment along with a pen.
- Log your miles for each trip. Record your starting and ending mileage for each trip you make to volunteer for qualified charities.
- Add ‘em up. Whip out the old calculator (or use a spreadsheet like me) at tax time and take a deduction for your charitable miles driven.
Of course, you’ll want to be careful whenever you try to tell the IRS you don’t owe them tax on every dime you make. You may wish to consult a tax accountant or attorney before deducting your charitable driving, and you’ll want to confirm that your volunteer work is being performed for a qualified charitable organization. But as long as you document your volunteer driving well, you should have nothing to worry about.
On a side note, I will mention that the Federal government has not seen fit to increase the deduction rate for charitable work mileage in over a decade. While deductions for business, medical, and moving mileage have all risen steadily (and are all at rates higher than volunteer work), volunteers have been stuck at the same deduction rate since 1998 despite rising gas prices. I think news of waning volunteerism will finally help to spur a rate bump for volunteers soon.
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111 Responses
1.
Fiscal Musings
June 16th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
I agree that it’s not that difficult to keep track of mileage. We also just keep a small notebook in each car, and it’s there whenever we need it.
2.
Maria @ Frugal Homesteading
June 17th, 2008 at 6:38 am
Oh my gosh that cartoon is awesome. Thanks for the laugh … you crack me up.
As for volunteer miles … I would love to volunteer if someone else would volunteer to take care of my kids while I helped the elderly or infirm. Oh gosh, I would volunteer all.the.time.
3.
Kyle
June 17th, 2008 at 10:26 am
I think soup kitchens should convert to pizza and beer kitchens to more accurately reflect the modern American lifestyle. I never keep records about charitable donations and always forget by the end of the year, so I just make something up in April. Maybe I should start keeping better records.
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June 17th, 2008 at 11:44 am
I think Kyle is right. A pizza kitchen would be much more marketable. I would personally love to go to a lasagna kitchen or a brat kitchen. In fact, why does it have to be a kitchen at all? Why can’t we serve hungry people in the living room with a big screen tv?
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June 17th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
hopefully the prices wll die down eventually, im a lazy person so typically i dont really pay much attention to how much i fill up and how much i spend but if prices continnue to jump up I may have to start noting things down.
BTW i reallylike how you have encorporated comic style drawings into your blogs, it really makes your blog uniqiue
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June 18th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Shhh… you’re ruining my carefully crafted delusion that sitting at home playing video games is somehow helping our nation’s economy, which means that the poor people get humvees.
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June 18th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
You make some good points and if you volunteer for someplace that provides food, you can likely get a free meal(s) and thats like 50 miles right there.
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Susan J. Ellis
June 19th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Dear Nick –
A colleague and friend in the UK sent me the link to this page because it fits so wonderfully with the “Hot Topic” on my Web site for the month of June: “Is the Rising Cost of Gas a Crisis or an Opportunity for Volunteering?” It’s at http://www.energizeinc.com/hot/2008/08june.html. We’re going to link to your blog page in our “Response” area. Of course, they’ll all get distracted by the very funny cartoon, but that’s ok!
Thanks for making some excellent points.
Susan
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October 27th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
‘Girl scout troop leader?’
‘Good lord, no.’
BWAHAHAHAHA! That exchange is hilarious, as is this comic as a whole. Wonderful work.
It does suck that the allowance for miles driven as a volunteer is stuck in the nineties, when miles for other pursuits aren’t. Hopefully, that’ll change soon, and we won’t have to suffer a complete drop in volunteerism to get it to happen.
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First, I know a lot of people who volunteer, and few of them are driving for government registered charities. They’re helping out their neighbors and needy in their community. So no tax deduction there.
Second, most of them aren’t in a high tax bracket to begin with, (and if spending $280 for gas in a year is a hardship, it’s a pretty good guess they’re not in a high bracket), than a $280 deduction would mean little to nothing on their tax return. In fact, itemizing instead of taking the standard deduction would cost many people more. A lot of these people are just working stiffs or fixed income seniors, just getting by themselves.
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