Is the fair market value of &quot;pro bono&quot; work tax deductible? If a person contributes a car, art, clothing, or other items of value to a charity, that person gets to deduct the fair market value of the contributed goods from their taxable income. Suppose, instead, a lawyer did pro bono work for a recognized legal charity such as a law clinic or legal aid group directed at say, elderly people. Would the lawyer be able to deduct the value of the hours contributed (at the lawyer's hourly rate)?
No IRS Pub. 526, Table 1, lists &quot;Value of your time or services&quot; under &quot;Not Deductible As Charitable Contributions&quot;. This is repeated several other places in the document. However, expenses incurred in the course of providing the services can be deductible in some cases. There's more specific information for lawyers at https://practice.findlaw.com/practice-guide/tax-deductions-for-lawyers-providing-pro-bono-services.html.
The official judgements do not reveal the funding for these lawyers; so where can I find this information? Nowhere. The commercial arrangements between lawyers and their clients are private and confidential like any other business transactions. You have no more right to know this then you do to know how your neighbour pays their mortgage. how could she have funded litigation in the EWHC and then EWCA before the UKSC? She may have rich parents or another benefactor who has in interest in her or the outcome of the case. She may have won the lottery. She may be the heiress of a dead rich uncle. By the way, "having" student loans does not mean you "need" student loans. Interest rates on student loans are cheap - if I need to pay $10,000 for a course and have $10,000 earning 5%, I would be nuts to use that if I could take out a loan at 3%.
The party that made the overpayment would have the right to sue you for "unjust enrichment" or "breach of contract" (since the terms of service no doubt provide or strongly imply that you are entitled to only one payment per sale), if you didn't voluntarily return the overpayment following a demand to do so, even though you received it through no fault of your own. Most of the core cases involve clerical errors in the bank account number used for a bank deposit. In general, there is a right to recover an accidental transfer of property to another, even in the absence of a clearly applicable contractual arrangement. As another example, if you were accidentally given a valuable coat at a coat check by accident and didn't notice it until later, the true owner would have a right to have it returned. The FTC regulation applies (as demonstrated by the link cited in the question) to intentional unsolicited deliveries of merchandise (which would always be tangible personal property by definition) to you through the mail. It does not apply to transfers of money, or to the accidental mis-delivery of property to the wrong person or the wrong address. The law in question is as follows: 39 U.S. Code § 3009 - Mailing of unordered merchandise (a) Except for (1) free samples clearly and conspicuously marked as such, and (2) merchandise mailed by a charitable organization soliciting contributions, the mailing of un­ordered merchandise or of communications prohibited by subsection (c) of this section constitutes an unfair method of competition and an unfair trade practice in violation of section 45(a)(1) of title 15. (b) Any merchandise mailed in violation of subsection (a) of this section, or within the exceptions contained therein, may be treated as a gift by the recipient, who shall have the right to retain, use, discard, or dispose of it in any manner he sees fit without any obligation whatsoever to the sender. All such merchandise shall have attached to it a clear and conspicuous statement informing the recipient that he may treat the merchandise as a gift to him and has the right to retain, use, discard, or dispose of it in any manner he sees fit without any obligation whatsoever to the sender. (c) No mailer of any merchandise mailed in violation of subsection (a) of this section, or within the exceptions contained therein, shall mail to any recipient of such merchandise a bill for such merchandise or any dunning communications. (d) For the purposes of this section, “un­ordered merchandise” means merchandise mailed without the prior expressed request or consent of the recipient.
Your assumption about charities, "that legally you cannot use any of the money raised/created for anything but charitable purposes" is incorrect. For example, a charitable organization can have an office, and can pay rent for that office; it can pay a janitor to clean up, a secretary to do correspondence, and a CEO to run the operation. The basic generalization for a 501(c)(3) organization is To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. Specifically, A section 501(c)(3) organization must not be organized or operated for the benefit of private interests, such as the creator or the creator's family, shareholders of the organization, other designated individuals, or persons controlled directly or indirectly by such private interests. No part of the net earnings of a section 501(c)(3) organization may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual. A private shareholder or individual is a person having a personal and private interest in the activities of the organization. Accordingly, the organization cannot be created with the purpose of benefiting John Smith, or the board of directors of the organization, or shareholders. This does not preclude spending money to operate the charity.
When starting self-employed work, there are a number of consequences. If the activity is gewerblich but not freiberuflich, it is necessary to register with the Gewerbeamt (~ trade office). This obligation is specificed in §14 GewO. Per §146 GewO, failure to perform a registration is a misdemeanour that can be fined with up to €1000. This assumes that the business has to be registered but not authorized. For any self-employed work, it is necessary to fill out the Fragebogen zur steuerlichen Erfassung with your tax office. This is specified in §138 AO. I can't find information about a concrete fine, but misdemeanours are generally fined with between €5 to €1000, in proportion with the severity. As a self-employed person, you are required to file taxes. Delayed tax filings are penalized (see §152 AO) with 0.25% interest per month on the due tax (at least €10 or €25 per month), but is capped at €25000. However, the surcharge can be dropped if no tax is owed. Note that without any tax filings, the tax office is required to estimate your earnings – and is allowed to assume the “worst case” of maximal reasonable earnings (§162 AO). You are required to inform your health insurance about any changes to your employment, including taking up self-employment. If you are insured through statutory health insurance, they will recalculate your past insurance premium. The good news that premiums depend on your income, so low additional income will lead to moderate additional payments. If you draw any kind of public benefits or social security payments (including Bafög or Arbeitslosengeld I/II), you must notify the respective office. You may be required to repay part of these benefits (with penalties). However, this will depend a lot on how much you earned. Given that we're talking about low sums, there might be some exceptions from having to register as self-employed. If your activity were revenue-neutral or -negative, there might be an argument that it's not a business but Liebhaberei, i.e. a hobby (but it depends on the details). Services as part-time tutor, artist, or caregiver might be tax-free for up to €3000/year (but it depends on the details). That the self-employed work was carried out through a computer makes absolutely no difference.
Contributing cash to a company is not tax deductible It’s either a capital contribution or a loan; either way it’s not an expense deductible to the individual (nor income to the company).
Almost certainly the answer to this is no because SB.8 talks of the $10K as being (minimum) statutory damages. (The actual provision 171.208(b)(2) is for damages &quot;not less&quot; than $10K, i.e. the court can award more in the first suit.) If e.g. someone breaks the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act by making spurious claims against a group of people, they are each entitled to up to $1,000 statutory damages each (and class action is specifically allowed/mentioned). Generally, you can't avoid paying damages to an injured party by paying them to someone unrelated (before). There's nothing in SB.8 to suggest otherwise, the wording is: a court may not award relief under this section in response to a violation of Subsection (a)(1) or (2) if the defendant demonstrates that the defendant previously paid the full amount of statutory damages under Subsection (b)(2) in a previous action for that particular abortion performed Only proof of payment (not even having lost another suit on the same incident in another county) precludes a judge from awarding the statutory damages. (Claimants can file suits in their county of residence per 171.210, which me not knowing the Texas civil procedure too well, seem to allow multiple parallel lawsuits to proceed.) Now SB.8 is special in that limits relief to the first who sues (or maybe the first who wins) while enabling a very large class to claim injured status and sue... which in itself doesn't make a lot of sense when speaking of statutory damages, but it's a novel kind of relief, so who knows what courts may decide. (It would be interesting if a court determined that that first-claimant limit in SB.8 is unconstitutional, under either Texas or federal constitutions. In some other state laws, there is sometimes a limit on the total amount of damages out of a single incident, but it's not awarded on a first-winner basis, instead there's a provision to &quot;allocate to each claimant his equitable share of the total&quot;.) Granted a defendant could come with a legal strategy that look something like: when sued in Texas county arrange for a &quot;friendly&quot; organization (members) to immediately sue in another county. Fight the first lawsuit so as to delay judgement, but immediately concede the one from the &quot;friendly&quot; organization members, so that only the &quot;friendlies&quot; get the statutory damages (first), possibly e.g. donating them back to the defendant thereafter. Whether this would work really depends on details in the Texas civil procedure law, which I'm not too familiar with.
Although your "title" may not of itself have legal force, that doesn't necessarily mean you can do as you please in every situation without fear of liability. For example, if you falsely claim to be a medical doctor or lawyer, you could find yourself liable for civil damages to defrauded clients; you may also violate criminal laws. (An anonymous bureaucratic form probably won't create that problem, because as another answerer pointed out nobody really cares or pays attention to titles most of the time. But stranger things have happened; and by "form" you could mean "tax form" or some declaration made under penalty of perjury. Lawyers generally avoid blanket "that's fine" answers, because there are almost always many ways that it might not be fine.)