And actually...now that I think of it, do mining pools qualify for status as non-profit organizations? Because logically, if the IRS wants to tax mining income at the income rate - donations to the pool should be equivalently tax-deductible for miners.
I think most pools are for-profit.
Eh, I don't necessarily mean you, DrHaribo, own the pool and take a salary draw from the proceeds, or even we, the miners, make a profit by participating in it as a collective entity.
I mean the entity Bitminter itself (similar to the whole discussion of how businesses are legally treated as if they are 'persons')...how is it legally classified? A business with you as the sole proprietor?
I know that in the States, for example the not-for-profit health insurer Highmark is able to classify itself with separate tax liability from its for-profit subsidiaries due to how the organization is structured legally (a number of for-profit subsidiaries pay their respective stakeholders, leaving a decent amount of tax-deductible revenue aside for the non-profit operations of the parent organization as a distinct entity).