Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Tax implications for collecting money for community dinners

[Bryan Syverson (bryan.syverson]

We ask cooks to submit their receipts along with a paper sign-up sheet. The
total expenses for the meal are divided up and charged to the diners of
that meal. In an attempt to make it cash-less, a running "tab" is kept
using a database I wrote ages ago (in MS Access!). Once each quarter we add
the charges or credits to the member's "real" QuickBooks account and
attempt to zero everything out. Since there's no "profit", there's no tax
implications - at least none that our accountant has found in the last nine
years.

-Bryan Syverson
La Querencia Fresno Cohousing

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>
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2018 20:28:27 +0000
> From: Susan Green <susan.mx [at] gmail.com>
> To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> Subject: [C-L]_ Tax implications for collecting money for community
>         dinners
> Message-ID:
>         <CAAayJ=JJEpTCGUC6pmfKtKWos0iMb-CwM0tCj77a+kvUV6WsXA@mail.
> gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>
> We are a new community in Denver.   When the last two units are sold, there
> will be 28 households. Up until now, we pay for each meal and the cash is
> used to reimburse the cooks. The management company that handles our HOA
> fees is not willing to do the Bookkeeping for our meals.
> 1. Do any of you know if you?re at risk for not reporting the money you
> collect as taxable income?
> 2. If you have a way to avoid a labor intensive bookkeeping system that
> won?t be risky with the IRS, please share.
> Thanks much for your help.
> Susan Green
> Aria Cohousing
>
> --
> Susan Green
>