Subject: Digest for the period 5/1/2006 - 5/2/2006
Date: Tue, 02 May 2006 01:04:25 -0400

Table of contents
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  1. Deducting Judge Expenses (PSBO7) (Jon Tobey) 
  2. Judging expenses, entry limits (Ed Westemeier) 


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From: Jon Tobey  Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2006 23:22:07 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Deducting Judge Expenses (PSBO7) 


No, I wasn't kidding. If you get paid to judge and declare the income, then you can write off the expenses. In fact, I write off all of my homebrewing, for various and sundry reasons.  I'm not a tax lawyer, I just hire a good accountant. If you're curious about this I suggest you ask your accountant about how it would work for you. 


Jon Tobey 
Ideastream 
425-822-8351
 
 "It's like one of those craziass Australian wooden Frisbees." My Name is Earl



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From: Ed Westemeier  Date: Mon, 1 May 2006 07:17:21 -0400
Subject: Judging expenses, entry limits 


Before this gets out of hand, here are some guidelines that apply.  
NOTE: I am not a lawyer, but I have these from a good source. You  
could deduct some of the expenses you incur as a judge as a  
charitable donation if the event meets all these criteria:

A. All the net proceeds of the event go to a recognized charity  
(specifically, under section "501(c)3" of the tax code).

B. The primary purpose of the event is to raise funds for that charity.

C. An admission fee is required, and everyone attending the event is  
able to deduct more than 50% of their admission/ticket cost as a  
charitable donation.

Bottom line: It's possible, but extremely unlikely that a homebrew  
competition will qualify. Just suck it up, folks. Beer judging is a  
hobby, like any other, and we do it because we enjoy it. If you're  
looking for excuses to write some of the cost off, then maybe you're  
not enjoying it as much as you thought you would. In that case, I  
would simply quit doing it for a while.

Personally, I think some competitions have gotten too large for their  
own good, and rely too heavily on judges coming in from far afield.  
The result is that the overall quality of the judging can suffer.

I see nothing wrong with setting an upper limit on the number of  
entries allowed, based on the number of judges the organizers can  
reasonably expect to show up. There are many more postings online  
these days from organizers begging for judges than there used to be.  
I thing this is probably a sign that we either need many more judges  
(probably true, but a long term thing) or there should be limits on  
entries (much easier to implement in the short term).

Ed


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