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If one paid some amount of money to acquire some data, then donate the data to a qualified tax-exempt organization, can one claim charitable contribution deduction for it in the United States?

Example: paying to sequence one's whole genome sequence, then giving the data to a qualified tax-exempt organization that does research on genomics.

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  • Were you purchasing information on behalf of the organisation? Presumably the data has some relevance to the organisation’s operations - but in that case, wouldn’t they have already purchased it themselves?
    – Lawrence
    Commented Jun 29, 2019 at 7:18
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    @Lawrence Example: paying to sequence one's whole genome sequence, then donating the data to a qualified tax-exempt organization that does research on genomics.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Jun 29, 2019 at 7:22
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    Do you still have access to the data?
    – mhoran_psprep
    Commented Jun 29, 2019 at 13:16
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    @FranckDernoncourt: We already recently explored blood and organ donations, and found that there's no advantage (you can only claim a deduction up to the value of imputed income you should have received from the sale, which exactly cancels the deduction). In this case at least you have an expense in excess of the imputed income, so it might be possible... but since you are donating merely a copy of the data, it is unlikely that each copy would be held to have a valuation equal to acquiring the first copy.
    – Ben Voigt
    Commented Jun 30, 2019 at 5:03
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    How much did it cost you? The IRS requirements for level of documentation depend on the value of the item.
    – mhoran_psprep
    Commented Jul 1, 2019 at 10:08

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It really depennds how much the taxman will believe that you gifting the data cost you.

You would be better positioned if you had contracted the organisation to have your genome sequenced

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