The people that got us through

I do want to clarify a few things. The list in the previous post is not the complete list of what we spent on our adoption. It did not include things like travel, agency fees, gifts we purchased, fees paid to the US government or a whole host of things that added up to over $44K. These were just a few of the things that I didn't anticipate when first figuring our adoption budget. The extra trip to Russia, short notice for travel, an entire second dossier and the need to do umpteen million background checks caused us to go over our initial "guess" by about $10K. As the process went on we kept getting hit by other things that we didn't anticipate paying for. $15 a page for apostilles was one. I will also clarify that from the second we signed our contract with our agency our fees did not change. They didn't even quiver. That part was written in stone. I won't disclose what our agency fees were as they have changed since we first signed 2 years ago.

But as we finished our taxes I did learn a few things on what is and is not covered in the Adoption Tax Credit. Travel expenses are! In fact just about everything you pay for is. Just make sure you keep receipts of all of it. However, donations you make directly to the orphanage are not tax deductible. The charitable donations tax deduction is for monies you give to charitable organizations originating in the US. Orphanages are not run by the US and therefore do not qualify.

We had 1 expense that ate up the whole $10K credit, but I went through all of our expenses just to see. If you are really curious as to how the money was spent I would be glad to share that, but please email me privately.