Pilots n paws on taxes

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Brad schneider

Filing Flight Plan
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Dec 16, 2018
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Brad
Does any claim pilot n paws expenses on your taxes? Has there ever been any push back from accountants or the IRS? If I do claim it is it legal in the FAA’s eye for a non commercial rated pilot to do so? I Rent so it’s just the rental cost I’m curious about.
 
The FAA waffled on this at one point but they were struck down. You can deduct any flying you do for charitable work. Deducting it does not turn it into a commercial operation (as long as you're not taking anything from people, to include free fuel).
 
I put my gas expense as a charitable contribution. If you are renting, you can put the full cost of what you pay in rental fees/gas.
 
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I just put my fuel cost totals into my tax prep software and listed PilotsnPaws as the charitable organization. They didn't audit me or send any nastygrams.
 
k9medic said:
Honestly, the standard deduction is probably higher than calculating all of those things yourself.

At one time it made sense financially to track all of that but most folks can't breach that threshold now.
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Some of us have property taxes alone that are nearly more than the standard deduction. :rofl:

#illinoisliving
 
NealRomeoGolf said:
Some of us have property taxes alone that are nearly more than the standard deduction. :rofl:

#illinoisliving
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I think you can only deduct up to $10,000 of those property taxes now. For me, the standard deduction was $13,850.

I did 27 hours of volunteer flying in 2023 but didn’t bother itemizing as I wouldn’t reach the standard deduction either.


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FYI if your PnP trip is between two other 501c3's you can get their tax id #'s. I've mostly used those and not the PnP id.
 
Between mortgage interest, SALT, and other deductions, we didn’t break this year’s standard deduction of $27,700 for mfj. Looking at 2026, I expect that to change significantly. So much so even the Roth 401(k) contributions may go back to being traditional.

But for now, it’s hard for us to break the standard deduction.
 
TCABM said:
Between mortgage interest, SALT, and other deductions, we didn’t break this year’s standard deduction of $27,700 for mfj. Looking at 2026, I expect that to change significantly. So much so even the Roth 401(k) contributions may go back to being traditional.

But for now, it’s hard for us to break the standard deduction.
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I guess I'm still used to the old standard deduction amount. Since that change didn't affect me, it is still stuck in my head. I need to recalibrate my expectation ruler.
 
NealRomeoGolf said:
I guess I'm still used to the old standard deduction amount. Since that change didn't affect me, it is still stuck in my head. I need to recalibrate my expectation ruler.
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Yeah, we itemized for many years, then TCJA recalibrated for us. Most of that expires during 2025.
 
The limit on local taxes spelled the end of itemization for me.
 
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