So you can&#39;t file a discount to a charity as a tax-deductible donation. But can you charge the charity your full rate, donate money, and claim that? If I offer a discount to a charity for services rendered, I can't claim the discount as a donation for tax purposes, right? But, can I charge them my full rate, and then donate the money I didn't want back to them? So, if my normal rate is $100/hr, but I wanted to offer the charity a 25% off discount, can I instead charge the charity $100/hr and then write them a check for $25/hr, and claim that check as a tax-deductible donation?
Doesn't help, does hurt. Say you charge a discounted rate of $75. That adds $75 to your taxable income. Say you charge a full rate of $100 and take a $25 charity tax deduction. That nets out to adding $75 to your taxable income, same outcome, except the $25 is in peril, due to the complexities of the tax law. For instance: Charity deductions give no tax benefit at all until you achieve $12,000 of itemized deductions (from donations and mortgage interest, certain state taxes, certain medical expenses etc.) Deem that unfair (we at charities certainly do!) but the fact is, it's because you already get a $12,000 standard deduction as a 'gimme'.* If you're a huge donor (I am on certain years, thanks DAF), you can only deduct 50% of income (with carryforwards, yay). Your donation-back reduces that. Doing it direct adds $75 to AGI ($37.50 to deduction limit), so you can deduct donations of $37.50 to other charities. The donation-back adds $100 to AGI (adding $50 to donation limit) except $25 of that is spoken for by the donation-back, leaving only $25 left. So I consider the maneuver to be a &quot;lose lose&quot; unless you have some bizarre tax reason for wanting to do that. Further, such an arrangement is likely to draw scrutiny from the IRS. By the way, here's an origin concept. IRS waives taxes on value which you create by your own DIY labor*. Say you mow your own lawn at an annualized cost of $100/year (lawnmower depreciaton and fuel) instead of $1100/year to hire it done. You created $1000 of value &quot;from the sweat of your brow&quot;. IRS's policy is not to treat that as income, and thus, not to tax that. Thus, when you are a craftsman, IRS views the sale of service as the taxable event, not the crafting itself. Similarly, when you do volunteer work for a charity, &quot;the sweat of your brow&quot; does not create a cash value of interest to the IRS in either direction. Really, when you are a craftsman offering services, and you do services for a charity, that is considered volunteer labor. * This used to only be about $5000, but Trump was keen on a postcard-sized tax form, so they folded the adult &quot;personal exemption&quot; into the standard deduction, removing 2 lines on the 1040 form. Meaning most Americans who itemized before, no longer itemized - they didn't have $12,000 of deductions! Schedule A goes away for them (so mission accomplished there)... but so does the tax deductibility of charitable contributions, which was a knife in the heart of charities.
The U.S. FTC gave extensive guidance on this subject in March 2013. (You may have noticed shortly thereafter that conspicuous disclosures of free samples and compensation started popping up in reviews and posts around the web.) The FTC's FAQ covers this question in such detail I would just encourage people to visit it directly. However, as is the custom on Stack Exchange, I will reproduce the most salient content here: If an endorser is acting on behalf of an advertiser, what she or he is saying is usually going to be commercial speech – and commercial speech violates the FTC Act if it’s deceptive. The FTC (ironically?) refers to 16 CFR §255 as "the Guides." The Guides, at their core, reflect the basic truth-in-advertising principle that endorsements must be honest and not misleading. An endorsement must reflect the honest opinion of the endorser and can’t be used to make a claim that the product’s marketer couldn’t legally make. In addition, the Guides say if there’s a connection between an endorser and the marketer that consumers would not expect and it would affect how consumers evaluate the endorsement, that connection should be disclosed. For example, if an ad features an endorser who’s a relative or employee of the marketer, the ad is misleading unless the connection is made clear. The same is usually true if the endorser has been paid or given something of value to tout the product. The reason is obvious: Knowing about the connection is important information for anyone evaluating the endorsement.
Yes this is possible, no this is not simple. You are eligible to work as a Freelancer in Germany if you're from an EU/EEA member state. Your nationality is not relevant beyond that. When you start your freelancing, you must inform your employer/university. This is important for two reasons: you may not compete with your employer, and your effective tax rate depends on your predicted total income for the year, which they need in order to withhold the correct amount. (Don't worry, any discrepancies will be resolved with the tax declaration.) In Germany, self-employed work is either gewerblich or freiberuflich which has numerous consequences. This depends on the type of activity. Consulting and activities that require a completed 5-year diploma are generally freiberuflich. But e.g. software development has unclear status. This is ultimately the decision of the tax authority. You might have activities of both kind, but this complicates your accounting. When you start a gewerbliche activity you must register with the Gewerbeamt, and list your fields of activity. Make sure to register as a part-time freelancer, not full-time. In any case you must notify the tax authority through the Fragebogen zur steuerlichen Erfassung, which you should fill through the online Elster system. This will include your income projections and offers some important choices. If your income from freelancing is below a certain threshold, or if you are purely freiberuflich, your (now mandatory) tax declaration is simplified (EÜR). You will not have to do professional accounting. If your activities are gewerblich and your income is below a certain threshold, you do not have to pay business tax. Kleinunternehmer-Regelung: If your income is below a certain threshold, you can opt-out from collecting VAT within Germany. You can always give up Kleinunternehmer-status, but you can't easily return to it. Otherwise, you may request a VAT-ID (UstId). You will then have to regularly pay advance VAT, typically monthly. You can offset any VAT from business expenses that you paid. Tax rules are complex, and depend on the country where the service is rendered – generally, the location of your client. For your services in other countries, you may have to register in that country, or you may fall below their thresholds. The following cases can be discussed more specifically: You can only list VAT on your invoices if you have a VAT-ID. If you have a VAT-ID, you must collect VAT within Germany and for B2C sales within EU. For sales of digital items to consumers in other member states, you may have to use the MOSS system. For sales within the EU where both parties have a VAT-ID, the reverse-charge mechanism is used and the recipient is responsible for paying VAT. For sales in non-EU countries no VAT applies, but you have to follow the local rules. For sales in the US, the tax agreement between the US and Germany exempts professional services from US income tax as long as you perform the services remotely. You will have to send your client's accountants IRS form W8-BEN to document this. However, state-level taxes can still apply. For any income that you get, you should have issued an invoice. The exact details are documented elsewhere, but important aspects are: Your and your client's identity Your VAT number if you have one, your tax number otherwise (but not your personal tax-ID!) A sequential invoice number that will stay unique during your business, e.g. just count from 1 or restart yearly like 2019-1 A date VAT payment if you have a VAT ID, otherwise a notice why no VAT is due. In your tax declaration, you will list income from self-employed work separately from income from employed work, even though it is taxed together. You will have to prove your freelance income, generally through form EÜR. The tax authority may request your invoices and your bank statements and receipts for any expenses. It is therefore recommended but not necessary to open a separate account for your business activities. If you are freiberuflich then most banks welcome you, for gewerbliche activities only one or two banks offer free accounts. Besides tax issues, you must also consider health insurance and retirement plans. As long as your freelancing is only a side job (Nebenerwerb) this is fairly simple. You will have to inform your health insurance about your freelancing. They will need an income projection to calculate your premiums. If your total income fluctuates a lot, you should try to get your premiums calculated individually for each month. This generally doesn't matter if you have private health insurance as they use a flat rate. At this point it should be clear that freelancing is not necessarily trivial, mostly because VAT is a concern. You should therefore look for help: a tax advisor can help you navigate the German tax system, at least for your first tax declaration. dealing with tax issues might require professional help from an accountant, e.g. how to manage VAT and how to correctly apply a tax treaty. most universities have things like founder-workshops. While geared towards first-time full-time self-employed people or startups, there's still a lot of valuable information there.
Can my accountant bill me for previous work he agreed to perform for free? No. The difficult part will be for you to prove that he agreed to do the job for free. Hence the importance of having this kind of "gentlemen's" agreements in writing. You have the burden of outweighing --even by means of circumstantial evidence-- the common presumption that professional work is done for compensation, not for free. However, just like it might be hard for you to prove the aforementioned "gentlemen's agreement", it would also be hard for him to prove that you agreed to (or knew, or should have known, you would have to) pay the amount he is billing now. In the event that you are unable to prove he agreed to work for free, you might want to dispute the reasonableness of the amounts he is pursuing so belatedly. It is noteworthy that the work at issue being "really simple" would not be the only factor for assessing how much he may recover. Other factors such as the accountant's qualifications or the market rate for similar services would be weighed in awarding recovery (if any). Can I legally ignore these invoices? It does not make any sense that he sends me invoices for work done 4 years ago. You may ignore the invoices regarding older work, that is, those for which the period of limitations has elapsed. For most cases, section 4 of the Ontario Limitations Act provides a two-year period to bring a claim. Since the accountant himself did the job, and most likely he was --or should have been-- aware of the payments due for his services, he would be unable to prove that his "discovery" of claims (see section 5 of Limitations Act) regarding older tax filings meets the period of limitations. Equivalently, see here the paragraph starting with "For example, if the courts determine that [...]".
(This is not meant as personalized tax advice - consult a tax lawyer or accountant for advice on your own tax situation.) As background, it's helpful to remember why the gift tax exists - it's to close a loophole in the estate tax. If a wealthy parent dies and leaves all their assets to their child, the government collects estate tax on the amount of the estate. So the parent might think to circumvent this by gifting most of their assets to the child before they die. That would deprive the government of a lot of revenue, so the gift tax ensures that such gifts are taxed in a roughly similar way to inheritances. So yes, if a parent gives their children birthday presents whose value exceeds the annual exclusion, then the parent must report the gift to the IRS (Form 709), and pay gift tax if necessary. Note that they only have to actually pay tax once the total amount of the gifts over their lifetime exceeds a lifetime exclusion amount, currently about $12 million. This tax is really only meant to hit the &quot;1%&quot;. It doesn't matter whether the gifts are of money or other items of value. &quot;The gift tax applies to the transfer by gift of any type of property.&quot; If it only applied to money, there'd be another loophole: the parent could dodge the tax by spending all their assets on a $20 million dollar gold bar (or painting, jewelry, rare postage stamp, etc) and give that to the child instead, which the child could then turn around and sell. The &quot;kiddie tax&quot; is an income tax on children. Gifts are generally not taxable income to the recipient, so the child would not be liable for any income tax, no matter how large the gift or how it is given. (The gift tax is not an income tax and is imposed on the giver, not the recipient.)
No, nor can I request a copy of your tax return. See 5 USC 552a. Record maintained on an individual are not subject to disclosure.
See https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate-taking-receipts/who-can-and-cant-contribute/, the section on "Foreign Nationals". The Commission stated, in AO 1998-14, that the use of any surname on a contribution check (or similar instrument) would not, by itself, give any reason to inquire as to the person’s nationality. Nonetheless, the Commission advised the committee to take the following minimally intrusive steps to ensure that the contributions it received did not come from foreign nationals: Ensure that public political ads and solicitations directed to audiences outside the U.S. contain a summary of the foreign national prohibition of 52 U.S.C. § 30121. Make further inquiry into the nationality of the contributor if the committee receives a contribution postmarked from any non U.S. territory. Make further inquiry into the nationality of the contributor if the committee receives a contribution indicating that either the bank or the account owner has a foreign address. In all of the these instances, if the contribution is submitted along with credible evidence (for example, a copy of a valid U.S. passport) that the contributor is a U.S. citizen, a U.S. national or a permanent resident alien, no further inquiry need be made. However, if the committee has actual knowledge that the contributor is in fact a foreign national, it may not rely on these documents as a defense. So, if the donor has been informed of the rules and gives a US address, the campaign can assume that they are eligible to donate, unless the campaign has actual knowledge that they aren't. If they give a non-US address, the campaign is supposed to get some other proof of nationality. By the way, that page also explains that the first part of your question is slightly wrong. It isn't only US citizens who are allowed to donate - US nationals (a rather rare category consisting mostly of people from certain US territories) and permanent residents are also eligible.
It says it's an "MP4 player" but it doesn't play MP4s. This seems rather straightforward to me---assuming it really doesn't play any kind of MP4 at all. I would agree you could go back to the shop armed with the appropriate wording from the SoG Act and state your case to the manager. If the front desk staff are unhelpful don't argue with them but rather ask to speak to the duty manager. No doubt the staff will talk about their thirty day return policy, but you are not interested in this; since you are relying on your statutory rights. If that is not successful, write directly to the head office. Keep your letter short, neutral and with no emotion whatsoever. Describe the facts, include proof of purchase, and request your money back. Argos is a large shop, they will pay you off ("as a gesture of good will") rather than fight a pointless claim in the SCC. However taking an action to the SCC is not necessarily free so you might yourselves not feel it worth it.