Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by dgdevil » Sat Mar 01, 2014 7:38 pm
The FAQ on the Girl Scouts home page claims cookies are not tax-deductible because the $4 per box ($5 in northern California) is fair-market value.
But they also say that each box costs 96 cents to produce, which is closer to like items at the supermarket - $1 to $2 at my rough guess. The rest goes to scouting programs.
Let's face it - $4 is quite hefty, esp. for plain varieties. So shouldn't we be able to claim a buck or two per box at tax time? Anyone tried?
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by livesoft » Sat Mar 01, 2014 7:43 pm
How many boxes of cookies does one have to buy in order to make this worthwhile? These things should be in the round-off error of your charitable giving.
Of course, you can buy them, then donate them to a charitable homeless shelter or food bank.
It's all about short-term opportunistic rebalancing due to a short-term change in one's asset allocation, uh, I mean opportunistic rebalancing, uh I mean rebalancing, uh I mean market timing.
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by Rainier » Sat Mar 01, 2014 7:55 pm
Go for it, deduct it. You know the risks.
- Bill
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by sscritic » Sat Mar 01, 2014 7:57 pm
dgdevil wrote:The FAQ on the Girl Scouts home page claims cookies are not tax-deductible because the $4 per box ($5 in northern California) is fair-market value.
But they also say that each box costs 96 cents to produce, which is closer to like items at the supermarket - $1 to $2 at my rough guess. The rest goes to scouting programs.
Let's face it - $4 is quite hefty, esp. for plain varieties. So shouldn't we be able to claim a buck or two per box at tax time? Anyone tried?
You left out the minimum wage that has to be paid to the girls scouts standing outside your grocery store. Actually, let's be fair to them and give them the $15 an hour that so many are asking for. Just as your grocery store has to cover labor costs, so should you in figuring fair-market value. Now what is the cost of your box of Thin Mints?
San Francisco’s minimum wage is indexed to inflation and now stands at $10.74.
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by bayview » Sat Mar 01, 2014 8:12 pm
Don't mess with my Thin Mints! 
In a less frivolous vein, I was once a Service Unit (think a collection of troops, geographically defined) Cookie Manager. I vividly remember counting out over $10K cash on my living room couch from one day's worth of sales. Any trained drug dog would have hit on the twenties stacked up on the cushions.
One of the most interesting and useful lessons from cookie sales was to make people understand that the first x number of boxes had $0 return. They were simply repaying the local council for the wholesale price. Only after that number of boxes were sold (and the money collected and turned in) did the troops start realizing a profit. I don't know how many of the girls grasped this, which is one of the realities of youth fund-raising: unless the adults in charge do what they ought to be doing, and have the kids set troop goals for trips and other adventures, figure out how much it will cost, and help them devise tactics to reach those goals, they wind up being free labor. 
I think that back when I was doing cookies, we sold them for $3.50/box while paying $3.20/box to the local council, which used the profits to run the local camp, subsidize troops in low-income areas, and pay staff. If you have a great location for your booth sales and move a lot of cookies, you can make a ton of money, but if your location isn't great, or you're relying solely on door-to-door, you may barely break even.
So to get back to the original post, if you want to try to declare your contribution, I think that you would have to do this on the profit margin that the troop realizes, rather than on the entire cost of the box of cookies. Yes, Little Brownie Bakers may be producing them for a buck a box, but the troop and the girls selling the cookies are paying a bunch more than that.
Just a thought as everyone scoops up their Thin Mints and Samoas and Boy Scout popcorn and church/temple calendars and holiday wrapping paper and whatnot. If the adult leaders are doing their jobs, these kids have set a plan, come up with a budget, and are trying to raise money to meet that goal. It does happen! (I often ask the girls selling the cookies what their plan is for the profits. It's pretty enlightening. I've met troops who were going to My Chalet in Switzerland, and by golly, they did it.)
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by sscritic » Sat Mar 01, 2014 8:20 pm
bayview wrote:In a less frivolous vein, I was once a Service Unit (think a collection of troops, geographically defined) Cookie Manager. I vividly remember counting out over $10K cash on my living room couch from one day's worth of sales.
While I never saw the stash of cash, my daughter's garage was filled to the brim with cartons of cookie boxes. Everyday she would make a run to distribute them and then come back with another load of cartons to refill the garage. Now, as a well known cookie monster, I had these thoughts of making off with a carton or two, but stealing from girl scouts is too much even for me. Besides, my daughter probably would have had to make up for the missing cartons.
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by bayview » Sat Mar 01, 2014 8:28 pm
sscritic wrote:
bayview wrote:In a less frivolous vein, I was once a Service Unit (think a collection of troops, geographically defined) Cookie Manager. I vividly remember counting out over $10K cash on my living room couch from one day's worth of sales.
While I never saw the stash of cash, my daughter's garage was filled to the brim with cartons of cookie boxes. Everyday she would make a run to distribute them and then come back with another load of cartons to refill the garage. Now, as a well known cookie monster, I had these thoughts of making off with a carton or two, but stealing from girl scouts is too much even for me. Besides, my daughter probably would have had to make up for the missing cartons.
Yup.
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by hq38sq43 » Sat Mar 01, 2014 8:53 pm
The seller's cost is irrelevant to tax deduction. The difference, if any, between what you pay for the cookies and their "fair market value" is your deduction, if any. Probably not worth fretting about. Buy the cookies, enjoy them, and forget about tax deduction.
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by livesoft » Sat Mar 01, 2014 9:08 pm
So buy 20 boxes and give away 5 boxes to charity. That gives you a $1 a box tax deduction. Legitimately.
It's all about short-term opportunistic rebalancing due to a short-term change in one's asset allocation, uh, I mean opportunistic rebalancing, uh I mean rebalancing, uh I mean market timing.
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by tomd37 » Sat Mar 01, 2014 9:14 pm
hq38sq43 hit the nail "in your coffin" square on its head according to IRS rules.
Tom D.
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by market timer » Sat Mar 01, 2014 10:00 pm
I think the arbitrage here may be to bake your own cookies for 96 cents per box and donate them at FMV of $4. Works for people in the 25% bracket or higher.
"I fancy that over-confidence seldom does any great harm except when, as, and if, it beguiles its victims into debt." -Irving Fisher
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by dgdevil » Sat Mar 01, 2014 11:46 pm
livesoft wrote:How many boxes of cookies does one have to buy in order to make this worthwhile?
Depends on whether I've just exited a pot dispensary.
Silly me, I thought mine was an original thought, but the NYT covered the same ground last year and concluded a deduction was justifiable.
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by sscritic » Sat Mar 01, 2014 11:54 pm
dgdevil wrote:Silly me, I thought mine was an original thought, but the NYT covered the same ground last year and concluded a deduction was justifiable.
Hmm, my reading skills aren't as refined as yours. I don't see the conclusion that you do.
It occurred to us at Bucks, though, that some store cookies were similar to Girl Scout cookies and might be priced differently. If you are really determined to get a tax deduction, why not, perhaps, compare the price of the store cookies with a box of actual Girl Scout cookies and then follow the general rule of subtracting the fair market value to arrive at a deduction? If the price for the store version is $3 and the Girl Scout version is $5, you can perhaps argue that the fair market value is $3, and you are making a deductible donation of $2. (It probably wouldn’t be worthwhile, though, unless the price difference is really substantial, or you bought a lot of Girl Scout cookies.)
Ms. Tompkins dismissed that approach in a follow-up e-mail. “There really is no valid comparison here,” she wrote. “In other words ‘similar’ is not the same.”
She continued, “Girl Scout cookies are manufactured as authorized by Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. and are not sold in stores. Each Girl Scout council independently sets their own retail price. ”
I think we need a discussion of the wash sale rules about now. If the cookies aren't substantially identical, then there is no wash sale, I mean deduction.
P.S. There is no more weasely word than perhaps. Perhaps is not conclusive. [Compare the root of conclude with the root of conclusive.]
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by Ged » Sat Mar 01, 2014 11:57 pm
If you want a deduction donate cash. The cookies aren't good for you anyway.
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by dgdevil » Sun Mar 02, 2014 12:07 am
Ged wrote:If you want a deduction donate cash. The cookies aren't good for you anyway.
Which is why I'd question donating them to a foodbank.
@sscritic - Yes, points taken.
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by Robert44 » Sun Mar 02, 2014 12:31 am
Our troops in St. Louis let you buy cookies and donate them to the troops overseas. Since we watch calories, that is what we do.
WE are not that cheap that we worry about a tax deduction for buying Girl scout cookies. You can only deduct the mark up, not the actual cost of the cookies.
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by cheese_breath » Sun Mar 02, 2014 12:44 am
Robert44 wrote:You can only deduct the mark up, not the actual cost of the cookies.
What markup?
dgdevil wrote:The FAQ on the Girl Scouts home page claims cookies are not tax-deductible because the $4 per box ($5 in northern California) is fair-market value.
Unless you pay more than $4 per box (more than $5 in northern California) you're paying fair market value so there is nothing to deduct. You don't get to deduct the difference between production cost and fair market value.
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by mnvalue » Sun Mar 02, 2014 12:56 am
Another option is to simply stop buying the cookies and donate cash instead.
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Re: Girl Scout Cookies - why not tax-deductible?
by beachmom » Sun Mar 02, 2014 12:59 am
If you want to support Girl Scouts and get a tax deduction simply give them cash or write a check. Not as much fun as cookies but way more efficient. Our troop always keeps a jar for donations out. Ironically some folks apologize for not buying cookies and put $1 in our jar. Well our troop gets to keep 50¢ per box sold so the $1 twice as good for us.
BTW the cookies are still $3.50 a box here in the rural Southeast.
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