Is the cost of a Kiddush deductible?

deductibility of payments to sponsor a kiddush.

I'm going to bet that the proper paper trail will show the donation to be toward the Rabbi's discretionary fund. The treasurer would then account for anything else.

I'm thinking this compares to my making a donation to a private high school scholarship fund. That would be a deduction. But if I were to pay for a particular individual's tuition, probably not.

I want to add to Ira's background description a factor that I think is significant in determining whether sponsoring a kiddush is a deductible contribution. The kiddush is not a private meal for invited guests of the sponsor. It's open to everyone who attended the religious services, whether or not they have any relationship with the sponsor. The kiddush is a function that is provided by the synagogue for all the people who attended services. The person who sponsors it is underwriting the synagogue's cost of providing the kiddush.

Under those circumstances, in my opinion (without any citations), the money that the sponsors contribute is clearly a deductible contribution to the synagogue.

On rare occasions, someone who is celebrating a life-cycle event will have a private kiddush that is open only to their invited guests. It's not a synagogue function. In this case, I don't see it as a deductible contribution. It's no different from inviting people to a private catered luncheon or dinner. But this is the rare exception. In most cases the kiddush is a synagogue function that is open to all, as I described above.

Bob Sandler

deductibility of payments to sponsor a kiddush.

No. The paper trail is a check payable to the synagogue or, in some cases, to the Kiddush Fund.

Ira Smilovitz

the Kiddush Fund.

I think Bob's answer is it. The distinction between the open event, vs a closed one.

Seems to me that might be relevant to whether or not what is served is taxable income to the participants, but should be irrelevant as to whether or not the contribution funding the function is deductible to the donor.

I agree with that.

___ Stu

but haven't found any (and

I'm not a pro, but I'll chime in.

It would seem to me that the cost is almost entirely deductible. I'll make up numbers to illustrate my reasoning.

Suppose the minimum contribution (to provide wine and challah only) was $50. A congregant decides to contribute $550 for a more elaborate meal. He and his immediate family constitute 1% of the attendees. Then I would say that $5 of the excess $500 was the benefit provided to him, and the other $545 was deductible. I wouldn't argue with someone who said the benefit was too minimal to matter so the entire amount was deductible.

Seth

Does anyone ever report things like this as income? If your company holds a party and serves food, would you try to figure out the value of the meal so you could report it? Should they include it on your W-2? What if it's a buffet, so they don't know how much you ate?

Isn't there some kind of "de minimus" rule that lets you ignore things like this most of the time?

1. This question has been discussed here before:

1. Here's an interesting wrinkle... Suppose the synagogue

*requires* a family to pay a set fee to sponsor a kiddush when they are celebrating a life-cycle event at the synagogue on Sabbath morning. "If members of the synagogue wish to celebrate their son's bar mitzvah, they are required to sponsor a kiddush for the entire congregation after services. The fee for sponsoring the kiddush is $XXX."

In this circumstance, it would seem that the donation is no longer voluntary but rather is a fee for services rendered; it is, in affect, a rental fee for the facility for the event.

(This is not theoretical; somebody actually asked me this question in private email a while back and said that their synagogue does exactly this.)

Thoughts?

Another poster mentioned the possibility that there's may be a required fee, but you can choose to give more to sponsor a more elaborate kiddush. The excess would be voluntary, and it seems like that portion should still be deductible.

I would argue that it's still deductible. Fees paid to religious institutions in exchange for intangible religious benefits are still deductible. There isn't a requirement that they be voluntary.

Ira Smilovitz

Taxpayer gives $3,000 to synagogue to sponsor a Kiddush. How is that any different than taxpayer giving $3,000 to her/his alma mater's general scholarship fund?

Almost everything depends on facts and circumstances. But based upon Ira's presentation of facts, IMRHO I would treat it as a charitable deduction.

Dick

I am not at all convinced that the circumstances here represent an "intangible religious benefit."

The sponsorship fee paid to the synagogue goes, in large part, directly to the cost of the extra food required for the larger kiddush needed for the larger crowd at the bar mitzvah.

An earlier poster suggested that the percentage of those who partake in the kiddush who are there only for the bar mitzvah would be small, but in many cases this is not correct. When we recently celebrated our daughter's bat mitzvah, around half of the people at services that day were there specifically because we invited them.

Our congregation was not in a position to be able to provide the luncheon kiddush we wanted, so we paid an outside caterer to do it, at a cost of several thousand dollars. This was clearly a fee for service, not an intangible benefit, and clearly (in my opinion) was not tax-deductible. If the synagogue requires a fee paid to the synagogue itself for the kiddush, it seems to me that this is simply the synagogue catering the kiddush itself rather than an outside caterer benefit; again, I don't see this as intangible at all.

It is also worth noting that the fee may cover not only the kiddush but also the use of the facilities, i.e., the synagogue, for the celebration of the bar mitzvah. If you rent a synagogue or church for a wedding, and the fee is paid directly to the synagogue or church, is that fee tax-deductible? I think not. The use of the facility seems, to me, to clearly be a tangible benefit, whether for a wedding or for a bar mitzvah.

I frankly doubt that the IRS would ever attempt to disqualify a deduction like this, unless it was a particularly large deduction and they were already going after the taxpayer for a pile of other stuff. But just because you can get away with deducting it doesn't make it a valid deduction.

The number of people who are there and how they got there (ie., as invited guests or as regular attendees) is irrelevant. The key point is that the kiddush is open to all who are in attendance.

No, because when you rent the facility for a wedding it is a closed event, only those you invite are permitted to attend. The kiddush is open to all who participate in (attend) the religious service, whether the sponsor has invited them or not.

There are many synagogues who state on their websites that sponsored kiddushes are tax-deductible. I would think that there are enough IRS agents who are members of synagogues that if the deductibility were questionable, someone would have made a case of it somewhere. Then, at least, we would have some precedent fall back on.

Ira Smilovitz

Is there some existing IRS guidance, precedent, or regulation which draws the distinction you are drawing, between an open and closed event, when determining that a particular deduction is valid?

In very religious Jewish communities the tradition is in fact to invite anyone who wants to the wedding celebration, including in particular poor members of the community. Are you saying that in such a community, if the wedding was open to all and catered by the synagogue, the parents would be able to deduct the entire cost of the affair, often running well into five figures? I find that hard to believe.

As I noted before, the distinction I am drawing is between _mandatory_ "donations" to use the synagogue for a particular event, and _optional_ donations. I don't think there is any question that the latter are deductible, and that is what synagogues who say that kiddushes are tax-deductible are generally referring to. I am, however, doubtful that the former are deductible.

Note that this question came to me by way of a woman whose synagogue specifically told her that the fee for her son's bar mitzvah held at their synagogue was _not_ tax-deductible. As you point out, the demographics mean that there's a good chance that there are people on the board with some expertise in accounting or tax law :-), so I am not inventing my theory out of thin air.

The original poster didn't say anything about this being a required fee for a service they were paying for. The synagogue is presumably going to hold a kiddish after the Sabbath prayer ceremony, whether or not there's a bar mitvah and whether or not the families pay for it. The OP said that the family could voluntarily contribute more, which would allow the synagogue to host a more elaborate kiddush.

I understand that te scenario I am putting forward is not the same as the original poster's question; you did not need to quote my entire 47-line posting just to append a 6-line paragraph at the bottom of it making that point. I agree with the opinions expressed by others that given the circumstances posited by the OP, the donation to the synagogue for the kiddush is deductible.

I am asking about a different scenario, the one I described. While this scenario is different from that put forward by the OP, it is still interesting, and as I noted, it is real, not hypothetical.

I would like to correct your assumption that "The synagogue is preseumably going to hold a kiddush after the Sabbath prayer ceremony, whether or not there's a bar mitzvah and whether or not the families pay for it." While it is true that some synagogues have a kiddush every week regardless of whether it is sponsored, many do not. In fact, in some cities the former is the exception rather than the rule. One of the things that the synagogue I attend is known for in the community is having a kiddush every week, because many synagogues in Boston do not. And a week or so ago, when I attended services at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, a prominent synagogue in New York City, they had no kiddush, and no one there seemed surprised by this so I assume it is normal.

Not that I'm aware of. I was drawing the distinction because I think we would all agree that a closed event would not be deductible. It's the open event that generates the differences in opinion.

[remainder snipped for brevity]

Ira Smilovitz

Because this is a guess. I will guess too. This looks more like deducting fancy clothes that you wear to work. Cost of uniforms for a specific job that are not everyday clothes are deductible. You have to pay taxes on income used to buy clothes for ordinary living. You have to eat anyway. Buying fancy meals you take for your own sustenance has to be done anyway.

If you want the deduction give the money to a charity that is one. Have the synagogue collect non-deductible kiddish meal. You get the benefit of the meal. The synagogue gets the benefit of not having to pay taxon its income from the meal.

I don't think people are guessing so much as attempting to apply the existing rules framework for what is and is not deductible to this particular situation.

I don't think this is a good analogy, since clothes are generally not deductible, whereas contributions to a house of worship _are_ generally deductible.

Considering whether something that would normally be deductible is disqualified for some reason in a particular case, is very different from considering whether something that would normally not be deductible is in a particular case.