United States tax information for volunteers.

If you are volunteering your time for a charity registered with the US Treasury, you likely will incur unreimbursed costs.  If you itemize on your individual income tax return, you may have charitable deductions for those receipted expenses.

The following is taken from an IRS Tax Tips paper on the subject:

Tax tips you should know if you have charity-related travel expenses

Do you donate your time to charity? If you travel for it, you may be able to lower your taxes. Here are some tax tips that you should know about deducting charity-related travel expenses:

• Qualified Charities — To deduct your costs, you must volunteer for a qualified charity.

• Out-of-Pocket Expenses — You may be able to deduct some of your costs including travel. They must be necessary while you are away from home. All costs must be: unreimbursed, directly connected with the services, expenses you had only because of the services you gave, and not personal, living or family expenses.

• Genuine and Substantial Duty — Your charity work has to be real and substantial throughout the trip. You can’t deduct expenses if you only have nominal duties or don’t have any duties for significant parts of the trip.

• Value of Time or Service — You can’t deduct the value of your time or services that you give to charity. This includes income lost while you serve as an unpaid volunteer for a qualified charity.

• Travel You Can Deduct — The types of expenses that you may be able to deduct include: air, rail and bus transportation, car expenses [i.e. rental of a car],  lodging costs,  cost of meals, and  taxi or other transportation costs between the airport or station and your hotel.

• Travel You Can’t Deduct — Some types of travel don’t qualify for a tax deduction. For example, you can’t deduct your costs if a significant part of the trip involves recreation or vacation.

Charity mileage rate: As of 2024, the rate is 14 cents-per-mile.