Published by Instant Press on behalf of Fight For A Living Wage.
You cannot deduct the value of the hours you volunteer. You can, under specific conditions, deduct money you spend out of pocket while doing that volunteer work. That distinction accounts for most of the confusion about volunteer expenses, and the IRS draws it in plain language in Publication 526, the document covering charitable contributions for 2025 returns.
What follows describes the published rules. It is not tax advice, and the rules changed for tax years beginning in 2026, so anyone filing should check current IRS guidance or talk to a tax professional about their own return.
Can I deduct the value of my time?
No. Publication 526 states it directly: “You can’t deduct the value of your time or services.” This holds no matter what your professional hourly rate is.
An attorney donating forty hours of legal work and a neighbor donating forty hours of filing get the same treatment, which is none. The rule applies to donated services generally, not only to professional ones.
What out-of-pocket costs does the IRS allow?
Unreimbursed expenses you incur while performing services for a qualified organization, with several named categories. Publication 526 identifies gas and oil costs “directly related to getting to and from the place where you volunteer,” along with parking fees and tolls.
It also allows the cost and upkeep of uniforms “that aren’t suitable for everyday use” when you are required to wear them while volunteering. A branded polo you would wear on a weekend fails that test. A hospital volunteer smock passes it.
How does the mileage option work?
Instead of tracking actual gas and oil costs, you can use a standard mileage rate of 14 cents a mile for charitable driving, per Publication 526. Parking and tolls remain deductible on top of the mileage rate.
That 14 cent figure is set by statute rather than adjusted annually for fuel prices, which is why it sits well below the business mileage rate. Publication 526 also requires that you keep reliable written records of your car expenses under either method.
What car costs are excluded?
The expensive ones. Publication 526 states you cannot deduct “general repair and maintenance expenses, depreciation, registration fees,” and the same exclusion covers tires and insurance.
The logic is that you would own, insure, and maintain the car regardless of whether you volunteered. Only the marginal cost of the volunteer trip counts, which is why gas, oil, parking, and tolls survive the cut and the fixed costs of car ownership do not.
Can I deduct travel for volunteer work away from home?
Sometimes, and the conditions are strict. Publication 526 allows travel expenses “necessarily incurred while you are away from home performing services for a qualified organization,” but only where there is “no significant element of personal pleasure, recreation, or vacation” in the trip.
Enjoying the work does not disqualify the deduction. The publication makes clear that you can deduct these costs if you are on duty in a genuine and substantial sense throughout the trip. Attending a convention as a chosen representative of an organization also qualifies for unreimbursed travel expenses.
What fails: sightseeing, fishing parties, theater tickets, and nightclubs, all named in the publication as nondeductible personal expenses. Travel costs for a spouse or children who come along also do not qualify.
What about meals and childcare?
Neither one, in the ordinary case. Publication 526 excludes “the cost of meals you eat while you perform services for a qualified organization” unless you have to be away from home overnight.
Childcare gets the same answer. Paying a babysitter so you can volunteer is not deductible, and the publication is explicit that this holds even if you could not have volunteered without arranging the care. That rule catches a lot of people off guard, because the expense is plainly caused by the volunteering.
Do I have to itemize?
For the ordinary charitable contribution deduction, yes. Publication 526 states that “generally, to deduct a charitable contribution, you must itemize deductions on Schedule A (Form 1040).” The same publication notes that the deduction generally cannot exceed 60 percent of adjusted gross income, with 20, 30, or 50 percent limits applying in some cases.
There is a change for 2026. The IRS page Topic no. 506, Charitable contributions states that beginning with tax year 2026, taxpayers who do not itemize may deduct up to $1,000, or $2,000 for those filing jointly. That provision is written for cash contributions to certain qualified organizations, which is a different category from unreimbursed volunteer expenses. How the two interact on a specific return is a question for the current IRS instructions or a tax professional, not for an article.
How do I know an organization qualifies?
Check it rather than assume it. The IRS maintains Tax Exempt Organization Search, which reports whether an organization is eligible to receive tax deductible contributions and whether its exempt status has been revoked.
Status matters more than the word “nonprofit” in an organization’s name. Fight For A Living Wage, for example, is a registered 501(c)(3) with EIN #99-1097858, and that designation is the kind of thing the IRS database confirms directly rather than something a donor should take on faith from a website.
What records should I keep?
Written ones, kept as you go. Publication 526 requires reliable written records for car expenses, and for contributions generally it describes the need for a written statement from the qualified organization acknowledging the donation.
Volunteer expenses are harder to document than a cash gift, because no organization issues a receipt for the gas you burned driving to a shift. A contemporaneous log of dates, destinations, miles, and purpose is the practical answer, written at the time rather than reconstructed in April.
The shorter version
Your labor is not deductible. Your gas, parking, tolls, required non-everyday uniforms, and genuinely work-focused away-from-home travel may be, if you itemize and keep records. Your car’s depreciation, your insurance, your lunch, and your babysitter are not.
Because the 2026 rules differ from the 2025 rules these citations describe, treat this as a map of the categories rather than a guide to a filing. The current year’s Publication 526 and instructions at irs.gov govern, and a tax professional can apply them to a particular situation. For the broader question of how charitable deductibility works for registered organizations, Fight For A Living Wage covers the donation deductibility rules at a general level.
