Hillary Clinton 2016: Campaign wants donors to pay for their own food, parking.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which has struggled to keep costs in check, wants donors to pay for their own food and valet parking at fundraising events, according to a request it filed this month with the Federal Election Commission.
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Campaigns usually either pay such costs directly or, in the case of smaller events in donors’ homes, allow hosts to donate food, drink and parking costs. But, when hosts provide services and the tally exceeds $1,000, the FEC interprets those costs as in-kind campaign contributions because they are considered “necessary expenses incurred to provide an inducement for the making of a contribution.”
And those in-kind contributions count against donors’ $2,700 contribution limit for the primary election. For example, if a host paid $3,000 for pastries, juice and coffee for a breakfast fundraiser, that person could write off $1,000 of it if it was in their own home, but they would only be able to donate another $700 in cash to the beneficiary campaign.
Under the accounting sketched out in the Clinton request, though, individual attendees — rather than the host — would each pay their own way. But the costs wouldn’t count as an in-kind contributions, and, as such, wouldn’t diminish the amount of cash they could give to the campaign.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/hillary-clinton-2016-campaign-wants-donors-to-pay-for-their-own-food-parking-121497.html#ixzz3jFAno8e3
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