"Stuart A. Bronstein" <spamtrap[at]lexregia.com> wrote:
- quote -

I'm a retired academic who can't stop writing scientific
journal articles (ego trip, I guess). So, I keep submitting
'em for publication, paying any mandatory pub charges out of
pocket. No income-earning business involved.

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AES <siegman[at]stanford.edu> wrote:

- quote -

It may be voluntary but it's also fee for service.

I don't know the specific answer to your question off the
top of my head. But my question is, why aren't these
payments deductible business expenses? That would make more
sense to me.

Stu

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A certain unidentified scientific society (USS) publishes
peer-reviewed scientific journals, holds meetings, gives
awards, the usual stuff.

- quote -

USS is a nonprofit, 401-whatever so that donations to it are
tax deductible, though it also happens to maintain a wholly
controlled "USS Foundation", which does fund-raising for its
activities.

The general policy of the USS journals for articles they
accept and publish is to impose mandatory publication
charges for pages beyond a certain length or for
author-requested color illustrations, and to ask authors to
pay voluntary page charges on shorter articles (but if not
paid, they publish anyway -- and the publishing decision is
made prior to asking for the voluntary payment).

Is payment of these voluntary page charges a deductible
donation to the USS? At the minute, they say, "No, it isn't
-- at least not from our viewpoint. It's just part of our
accounting system for the journals."

That's *their* response. Seems to me, however, that from
the payor's viewpoint, it's a voluntary payment to the USS
which, if labelled as a donation, would be without doubt
deductible, and from which the payor receives no additional
benefits of any kind (his or her article would be published
the same in any case).

Obviously the payor can avoid any question by just declining
to pay the voluntary page charges, then making a
corresponding donation -- but suppose he or she stubbornly
insists on doing the opposite? Likely interpretation of this
situation by the IRS?

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