Actually, I’m misremembering a discussion with my wife (who’s an accountant, and has worked for nonprofits for the last <mumble> years. She was not allowed to work for $0, as it would be considered an in-kind donation of services, and there’d be weird tax hassles. Working for less than the charity’s pay band for that job (which is often less than industry competition already) is probably OK.
That’s still surprising to me: many professionals do substantial pro bono work, and I’ve never seen that taxed. (There are lots of online questions where people ask whether you can deduct the lost income on your taxes, to which the answer is a very clear no, but if you had an obligation to report the waived income as income I would expect that to be mentioned there.)
Actually, I’m misremembering a discussion with my wife (who’s an accountant, and has worked for nonprofits for the last <mumble> years. She was not allowed to work for $0, as it would be considered an in-kind donation of services, and there’d be weird tax hassles. Working for less than the charity’s pay band for that job (which is often less than industry competition already) is probably OK.
That’s still surprising to me: many professionals do substantial pro bono work, and I’ve never seen that taxed. (There are lots of online questions where people ask whether you can deduct the lost income on your taxes, to which the answer is a very clear no, but if you had an obligation to report the waived income as income I would expect that to be mentioned there.)