- Dues are payments or obligations you may have to one or more organizations as a result of continued membership or use of privileges. Some dues are deductible and some dues are not tax deductible. Some dues may be reimbursed by your employer. If your employer reimburses you, you may not take the tax deduction.
- You can generally deduct dues to professional organizations and trade organizations to which you belong for business reasons. You can also deduct the cost of subscriptions to newsletters and magazines published by industry associations and trade groups which you read for business purposes. You can also deduct memberships to charitable organizations. However, you can only deduct itemized deductions to the extent they exceed 2 percent of your income. You can generally deduct dues to a Chamber of Commerce if needed for your job, and union dues. The test is that the membership must help you perform your job.
- Dues which are generally not deductible include health club and golf club memberships where the primary purpose is your own pleasure, gratification and recreation. You cannot deduct dues to lobbying and political organizations. If an organization informs you that a portion of your donation is used for nondeductible lobbying, activities, you cannot deduct the portion of your dues attributable to this activity. You may also not deduct dues to airline, hotel and luncheon clubs.
- The procedures for itemizing deductions are detailed in IRS Publication 529, "Itemized Deductions." Generally, individual taxpayers must file a Form 1040 and a Schedule A. You cannot use a Form 1040EZ. You should compute your taxes twice -- once itemizing deductions and once taking the standard deduction. Many middle-and-lower income taxpayers and those with modest deductible expenses will be much better off taking the standard deduction.
previous post