How much is too much?…

[Bob Cole]

[Charlie King] “The only exception has always been if I am really involved with a charitable organization, then I will give my work for free as a labor of love, but then too that is also tax deductable.”

?
I have been told I can not take a tax deduction for donating my labor.

I do admire your stance about never discounting, and donating labor entirely for charitable causes.

My mileage differs; I discount for non-profit orgs, but I do charge, to keep them from taking, and taking…. If there’s no fee, they don’t respect you as much, and they have no incentive to be businesslike in terms of finishing a project.

— Bob C

[Mark Suszko]

Bob, one way to handle that kind of thing is something I call “virtual billing”; creating an invoice with the rates and work description and the total amounts it *would* have cost them elsewhere. One way to use this when they keep coming back for more freebies is you can tell them your budget has a cap on the cash value amount of free billings per month, reative to paying customers, and they’ve exceeded that limit for the month: they can either wait another month for the next available freebie time, or they can continue on a “non-virtual” cash basis right away, like the other paying clients.