Question:
As a bocbur I gave chomesh. Married with kids, can not really afford nasser but give since we have family help, so tithe mine and wife’s earnings. The q is if I want to keep track of chomesh via the masser calculator site, if can deduct household expense, which I don’t deduct from masser rather only work expense. Right now we are over masser a lot but if we’re doing chomosh would owe a lot more. Thanks
Answer:
It isn’t clear from your question which specifically which household expenses you are referring to. The general rule though, is that although you can deduct business expenses, you can not deduct household expenses. This is because business expenses were needed in order for you to make the money and essentially you didn’t “make” that money, and these expenses reduced your profit. Therefore you can deduct those expenses from the total profit that you made. After deducting these expenses you give 10% of that amount. On the other hand, your household expenses don’t diminish the profit that you made, rather they are the way that you chose to spend the profit that you already made. Therefore they can not be deducted from maaser. As a side point, even business expenses are not deducted from that actual maaser, but from the amount of money that you have to take maaser from. Meaning that if you have 10k in profit and $500 in expenses, we calculate as if you made $9,500, and therefore you will give $950 to tzedakah. If you deduct the $500 from your tzedakah money you will be giving only $500 to tzedakah.
Best Wishes
