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