USA Reimbursement of volunteer Board members/officers

[Nonprofit Treasurer]

We are a chapter of a 501(c)(3) charitable organization and are part of our national organization's tax exemption/umbrella tax reporting. We have no employees and there is changeover in board leadership every two years. It's a pretty small operation and I am going into my third year as treasurer. Because of our non-profit status, the incoming organization president and I are having a disagreement about how much we are lawfully allowed to reimburse our executive board members that will be traveling by car to our annual business meeting in June.

My understanding is that we are able to at least reimburse people for their actual gas costs plus tolls/parking fees (as opposed to $0.14 a mile). The incoming president has stated that we are not allowed to reimburse anything beyond the $0.14 a mile volunteer rate because our organization is a non-profit and we are volunteers. Our past practice has been to reimburse actual
gas costs.

Our organization already has policies and procedures for documenting and approving all reimbursements that are made to board members and other volunteers (e.g., budgeted amounts for expenses, part of our Policies and Procedures, online submission form to track reimbursement requests, require receipts and board approval for reimbursements no matter how small).

After considerable web searching, I can only find information from the IRS about how much volunteers are able to deduct from their taxable income (i.e., $0.14 a mile or actual gas/oil costs on their own taxes as part of Schedule A) [1]. I'm not finding restrictions about how much we can reimburse as an organization, and worst case seems like recipients would have to report the difference between what we reimburse and volunteer mileage rate as taxable income. I have seen opinions posted online about it being okay to reimburse the non-charity federal rate for non-profit employees; our officers/board members are all volunteers.

Anyone have other information on this one way or the other? We are going to be pay for flights in total for everyone that is not driving, but we can only reimburse $0.14 a mile for any board members driving because they are not paid employees? This doesn't seem right but I can't seem to find solid evidence one way or the other, and this is my volunteer/service side job.

Your input and time are so appreciated.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/cha...teers_working_together_to_help_the_public.pdf (Slide 6)

 

[Drmdcpa]

You either use the mileage method or actual expense method. The mileage method is not limited to IRS limit. It also does not include other reimburseable expenses.

If you go away from the IRS value per mile, you should document why. The business mileage is much higher. The volunteer mileage or business mileage could apply because the officers are incurring the expense the organization would incur as an ordinary course of business.

How much would it cost the organization to hire transportation either individually or as a group?