Running a Tor Server as a Tax Deduction?

[Brian Puccio]

On Jul 8, 2009, at 1:44 AM, Ringo wrote:

> Hey,
>
> I was thinking about how to get more companies/organizations to run  
> Tor
> servers and then it hit me that maybe the expenses associated with  
> doing
> so could be taken as a tax exemption. It's hard to convince a  
> company to
> run a Tor server, but if it's in their financial interest, you might
> have a little more leveragee.
>
> Do people think that running a Tor server could be seen as a  
> donation to
> the Tor Project (which is a 501(c)(3) charity IIRC)? Or is this kind  
> of
> like deducting mojitos as "business drinks"? Obviously I'm not looking
> for advice from a CPA/accountant (although that would be great), just
> wondering based on people's personal knowledge of tax law. If people
> think it's worth looking into (or maybe possible), I'd be happy to  
> hire
> a CPA/tax expert and talk with them about it. I just thought I'd ask
> here before throwing my money away ; )
>
> Ringo

I asked about three and a half years ago and got this response:

On Jan 30, 2006, at 7:15 PM, Roger Dingledine wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 30, 2006 at 07:07:58PM -0500, Brian Puccio wrote:
>> I know you aren't CPAs, but I was wondering if the following question
>> was ever posed: can one consider running a tor server (a few  
>> hundred GB
>> a month, maybe as much as a TB) a donation for purposes of tax
>> deductions? I know it's a stretch, but I was just wondering. Thanks  
>> for
>> your time!
>
> I'm not a CPA, but as I understand it, you need to give actual
> valuables to a 501c3, and they need to register them, include
> them in their books, and so on.
>
> In any case, Tor is not one of those.
>
> The best I could imagine is to call your bandwidth use a business  
> expense
> in your schedule C, if that makes sense for your business.
>
> --Roger