How $9M Warren Buffett Steph Curry Lunch Yields $18M Tax Deduction

The news that a bidder on eBay paid $9 million for a private lunch with Warren Buffett and Stephen Curry was a nice update to the Buffett hosted lunch event that for years has raised millions for the GLIDE charity in San Francisco. For 2026, the auction was updated to add basketball star Curry and his wife Ayesha in connection with their foundation Eat.Learn.Play. As for the $18M, Buffett even promised to match the donation, so his favorite charity as well as the Currys’ charity will benefit.

Buffett last held the lunch auction tradition in 2022, when an anonymous bidder paid a record $19 million. This year, the winning bidder gets the chance to have lunch with Buffett and the Currys and to bring along seven guests. The lunch is set for June in Omaha. On a smaller scale, many people buy charity items at auction, and there are frequently misunderstandings about how they are taxed.

Donations to bona fide charities, of course, are tax deductible. Before making a donation, it’s important to search the IRS list of tax exempt organizations to make sure the charity qualifies. Writing a check is simple, and the amount of the charitable contribution deduction you get is too. But donations in kind trigger special rules, including about appraisals. If your donation in kind is worth more then $500, you need to file an IRS Form 8283, Noncash Charitable Contributions.

The rules for charity auctions and other events also have special IRS rules. Donors who purchase items at a charity auction can claim a charitable contribution deduction, but only for the excess of the purchase price paid for an item over its fair market value. Plus, the donor must be able to show that he or she knew that the value of the item was less than the amount paid. That means if you pay $250 for something worth only $100, you are entitled to a $150 deduction.

In the case of tickets to charity dinners–say where you buy a charity dinner ticket for $500, the charity is supposed to inform you of the value of the dinner. Only the excess qualifies for a tax deduction. In the case of the lunch with eight people with Buffett and the Currys, no matter how elaborate a lunch it is, most of the $9M should qualify. Charities are subject to IRS regulations that generally require them to inform bidders of the value.

How much would this particular lunch be worth? Surprisingly enough, the presence of Warren Buffett, Steph and Ayesha Curry at the lunch—or any celebrity’s—is not treated as having a value. Yet as a practical matter, the lunch might have a big value for the donor. In one famous story, some years ago, one successful lunch bidder ended up later being a stock picker for Buffett.

Speaking of stock, Buffett has made many large donations to charity over the years, and he has generally not made them in cash. The famously savvy investor and now retired CEO of Berkshire Hathaway does it in stock. Why donate stock rather than cash? When someone donates stock, the donor gets a charitable contribution deduction based on the fair market value of what is given.

By donating at the market value of the shares, Buffett gets credit for the appreciation in the shares. That is, the fair market value of the stock is his donation. Yet he does not have to pay income tax on his gain as he would if he sold it. Donating appreciated stock is far better than selling the stock, paying tax on the gain, and donating the cash. Giving appreciated property is the kind of wise tax planning you would expect from Buffett.