GHz-Days and Taxes
 

I'm sure I can't be the first one to think of this, but I wasn't able to find a thread on it in the forum.

Since GIMPS is a non-profit, how realistic do you think it would be to use donated GHz-days as a tax deduction. On the surface, it seems pretty straight forward to me. If I donate mileage on my car while doing something for a charity, the IRS lets me take a tax donation based on an established rate per mile drive. Couldn't donated GHz days work similar?

I realize this isn't a tax forum, and I'm not looking for tax advice, I'm just wondering if there has been a conversation on this in the past, and if so was a general consensus reached (on the concept as a whole, or a $ figure per GHz days)

Googling: [FONT="Fixedsys"]"distributed computing" tax charity[/FONT] makes for some interesting reading.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;425699]Googling: "distributed computing" tax charity makes for some interesting reading.[/QUOTE]

Ya, certainly no lack of opinions out there, I was just wondering if the concept was discussed here. I notice [URL="http://www.quantumcures.org/our-mission-role/"]this[/URL] non-profit distributed computing project implies it may be tax deductible.

This was discussed at least a little bit in post five and onward in the following thread:
[URL="http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=18209&highlight=tax+deductible"]http://www.mersenneforum.org/showthread.php?t=18209&highlight=tax+deductible[/URL]

hi,
a donation to Mersenne Research, Inc. is tax-deductible as allowed by law (USA).
to spend an amount of computing power (results - GHz-days) should not be tax deductible
for such a kind of mathematics project - in my opinion.
and something important: who will control this ?

[QUOTE=Fred;425698]I'm sure I can't be the first one to think of this, but I wasn't able to find a thread on it in the forum.

Since GIMPS is a non-profit, how realistic do you think it would be to use donated GHz-days as a tax deduction. On the surface, it seems pretty straight forward to me. If I donate mileage on my car while doing something for a charity, the IRS lets me take a tax donation based on an established rate per mile drive. Couldn't donated GHz days work similar?

I realize this isn't a tax forum, and I'm not looking for tax advice, I'm just wondering if there has been a conversation on this in the past, and if so was a general consensus reached (on the concept as a whole, or a $ figure per GHz days)[/QUOTE]

I contemplated (not seriously) what I'd be able to do with the time I've volunteered and a tax deduction. :smile:

But seriously, it would be difficult to make the case that the money spent on electricity is deductible if it's for a non-profit. I guess if someone were brave enough they could try, but we're talking about precise record keeping of how much time you use the computer for your own stuff and how much just for Prime95, and then figure the percentage of your annual electricity...

And it wouldn't be considered the same as a cash donation, but a donation of goods or services, so you may even have to consider not what it cost you, but what the value of the goods/service is to the non-profit.

In the end if you jumped through all the hoops you may slice 20-30 bucks off your tax bill if you had a computer devoted 50% to Prime95 and the total electricity cost to you was in the neighborhood of 500-600 USD for the year (I'm pulling numbers out of my nether region, but I think we're in the ballpark).

If you've ever gone down the road of trying to deduct for a home office, you may have an idea of how troublesome things like that become, plus you're probably increasing your chances of an audit by being "too creative" with deductions.

Not to mention, you'd have to be one of the folks who itemizes instead of taking the standard deduction. Great if you have a home mortgage or similar things, but unless you are AirSquirrels and/or your electric bill is in the thousands per month, I wouldn't bother. :smile:

I guess I was thinking more along the lines of putting a $ value on a "GHz Day", kind of like the IRS puts a $ value on a miles driven for business (as opposed to having to track every gas receipt, car repairs, etc.). There must be some statistics somewhere (taking into account hardware (average lifespan) and electricity) of what it costs to produce "1 GHz Day", kind of like the IRS established a $ value for a mile driven. If it were done that way (based on value per GHz day), the accounting would be simple (since it's all recorded on primenet).

It would be pretty straightforward to come up with a *cost* of a Ghz-day, but not a *value*. Mileage is a different beast with special IRS treatment; for other items, the deduction is commensurate with the value (to the charity) of your donation, rather than what it cost you to create/donate it.

I see no way to value a Ghz-day to GIMPS. Like Madpoo suggested, the value is so low that a deduction isn't worth the risk of audit from trying to take it.

It would not be a fair measurement. On my Titan Black I can do 600-620 Ghz-days per day with factoring but "only" 80-100 if I run LL tests. If real money was involved everyone would be just factoring on GPUs and no one would run LL tests. Besides that there is no security involved when turning in manual assignments like ECM tests.

You can also "legally" earn 621,000 Ghz-days on 16 ECM tests if doing huge B2 values with GMP-ECM:
[url]http://www.mersenne.org/report_top_500_ecm/[/url]

[QUOTE=lalera;425757]hi,
a donation to Mersenne Research, Inc. is tax-deductible as allowed by law (USA).
to spend an amount of computing power (results - GHz-days) should not be tax deductible[/QUOTE]

So the solution is easy :)

mersenne.org could add a donation functionality where people could give 50$ per month which will be used by mersenne.org to buy and run a worker machine. The Donator will get the GHZ days of this machine to his account.

[QUOTE=ATH;425817]It would not be a fair measurement. On my Titan Black I can do 600-620 Ghz-days per day with factoring but "only" 80-100 if I run LL tests.[/QUOTE]Seems like the solution is simple, we all buy Titan X's and trial factor to sqrt(M_p). :razz: