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Today I spent 15 minutes of my time to drop off burnt-out incandescent light bulbs at the only place in town that accepts them. I was charged $1/bulb for helping the planet. The cashier told me to keep my receipt for "tax purposes", but was unable to tell me what kind of tax benefit I can claim.

The organization where I dropped the bulbs is considered a non-profit charitable organization.

So, is this deductible in any way?

(Of course this is backwards. To motivate people to recycle, a consumer should be paid back a deposit that is factored into the manufacturing cost. Oh, well.)

NL - Apologize to Monica
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Boris Bukh
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    Can you share the name of the place you found? Incandescent recycling seems uncommon. – Hart CO May 24 '17 at 14:34
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    It looks like batteries plus recycles a very wide variety of light bulbs. If there's a location near by, that might be a better option than paying to recycle your bulbs. – NL - Apologize to Monica May 24 '17 at 14:52
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    Thanks, I missed that option. Note that their website says "Fees may apply". (Getting to the closest location to me would involve spending a good hour of my time though.) – Boris Bukh May 24 '17 at 14:58
  • This isn't for tax refund/credit/rebate purposes - it's so you can list what you spent adequately - there's no tax breaks in PA for recycling your light bulbs. The fees might be deductible but you should consider asking a tax accountant then about that. – Thomas Ward May 24 '17 at 21:20
  • @HartCO Construction Junction in Pittsburgh – Boris Bukh May 24 '17 at 23:05
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    I'm kind of skeptical about them being recycled, they might have some people who re-purpose them, but there's so little glass that it seems unlikely that they can be effectively recycled. – Hart CO May 24 '17 at 23:40
  • @HartCO: What about the metal? Is it enough to be useful? – user541686 May 24 '17 at 23:46
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    @Mehrdad Could be, I don't really know anything about it, just that none of the recycling centers that I've interacted with took incandescent bulbs, and my city specifically instructs they be put out with the trash since they can't get recycled with their other mixed items. – Hart CO May 25 '17 at 00:04
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    @HartCO My city says that they do not accept light bulbs in thrash. I am betting that 99% of light bulbs do end up in thrash given the difficulty of doing anything else with them (CFL can be recycled for free, but only in a few locations; for incandescent see above) – Boris Bukh May 25 '17 at 00:16
  • I wonder if they just generalize "no light bulbs in the trash" so that CFL's don't end up in there. Curious. – Hart CO May 25 '17 at 00:39
  • I remember growing up we always recycled aluminum cans and sold them for money. Then the city instituted a weekly recycling thing where you could take your cans, papers, etc. to one place. And they had the nerve to ask for a "donation" which I learned was mostly paid to the company doing the recycling. –  May 25 '17 at 05:30
  • Sounds like you should have just set them on the counter and walked out. – sirjonsnow May 25 '17 at 13:28

3 Answers3

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If they charge a fee to accept an item, it's reasonable to assume the item has insignificant value, so the only tax-deductible bit would be the money you donated to their charity. What you describe sounds like a fee for service, not a charitable donation. The organization should provide a fee breakdown to show what percentage (if any) of the fee is a deductible contribution.

There could be some additional PA-only tax benefit, but I didn't come across anything in my brief search.

Hart CO
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They are certainly only suggesting that the money you pay to recycle the bulbs is tax deductible as a donation, assuming that they are indeed a 501(c)(3) non-profit.

Donations of goods are only deductible at fair market value. Light bulbs that no longer light up have no market value, so only the payment could possibly be deductible.

NL - Apologize to Monica
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If a business incurs expenses in the process of its trading, generally those expenses are deductible.

Disposing of waste is generally held to be a deductible expense.

Josh
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