For at least 10 years, Christopher J. Woody Sr. raised money for his charity, The Woody Foundation, by throwing at least 17 parties and events a year at the Military Retirees Club of Richmond in North Side, a large private space that permits alcohol.

Mr. Woody, 38, a behavioral health technician, said he used the $15,000 or so in net income that the foundation’s events generated to buy and distribute Christmas gifts to needy city families and to salute cancer survivors at an early summer event.

But the fundraising has gone south amid a nasty dispute over the club’s collection of the 7% city admissions taxes on events that The Woody Foundation hosted at the 51-year-old building located at 2220 Sledd St.

The club’s president, Earl Reid, has barred The Woody Foundation from hosting events at the club for refusal to pay the tax even though assistant City Attorney Caitlin W. Weston has issued an opinion that the foundation’s events are tax-exempt.

The amount of tax the Military Retirees Club has collected is based on attendance and the entry fee, but ranges from $250 to $500 per event, cutting into the foundation’s revenue.

Emails obtained by the Free Press show Mr. Reid imposed the ban on Feb. 11, 2022, one day before a scheduled foundation event, though Mr. Woody later found that the club used his foundation’s state-issued banquet license and held an open-to-the public social event on Feb. 12 anyway.

In response to the ban, attorney Todd A. Knode has filed suit on behalf of Mr. Woody and his 14-year-old foundation against the Military Retirees Club, Mr. Reid and the club’s vice president, Vester McCollum Jr.

The suit, alleging misappropriation of the purported tax money the club received from the foundation, seeks at least $30,000 in compensation for the foundation’s alleged loss of income from planned events and for the allegedly unwarranted disruption of the business relationship.

Mr. Woody said the foundation’s net income has dropped by nearly 90 % because replacement locations hold fewer people and are not as popular as the Military Retirees Club. He also said he has had to sharply cut back on the 17 to 20 events he used to host.

“It’s been a struggle,” said the Richmond native, who takes no pay from the foundation he started in 2008 as a way to give back and uplift the community, particularly its young people.

The Military Retirees Club and its two top officers have filed a strong denial of the suit’s allegations that the tax was wrongly collected and withheld from the city. A trial date has not been set in the suit that was filed in April 2022.

The dispute erupted in February 2022 after Mr. Reid notified Mr. Woody that the admissions tax for two events, including one on New Year’s Eve, had not been submitted.

“I had always paid the tax without question,” Mr. Woody said, but he said he stopped doing so after finally going to City Hall in January 2022 to check on whether the foundation had to pay it.

He said he was surprised to learn the city Finance Department had not recorded the receipt of any admissions tax money from the Military Retirees Club on behalf of his foundation.

And when a Finance Department staff member inquired of the city’s legal department about whether the foundation had to pay the tax, Ms. Weston responded, “No.”

She stated that the city regards the fee that The Woody Foundation charged at the door as “a voluntary donation” rather than as a taxable admissions charge as “entry into the event (was) not dependent on the payment of the charge.” In other words, people could enter even if they did not pay.

Represented by attorneys Richard C. Baker and Alexander L. “Alex” Taylor, the Military Retirees Club as well as Mr. Reid and Mr. McCollum insist the tax still must be paid and also allege that contracts providing for the tax were made with Mr. Woody and not with his foundation.

Mr. Woody, though, said that he signed contracts as the president and registered agent of the foundation. “The foundation was always listed as the party making the contract,” he said, and an exhibit in the lawsuit lists the foundation as the party the Military Retirees Club contracted with.

He also noted that the foundation had to be on the contract in order to qualify for banquet license from the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Department to sell beer and wine.

While there are exceptions, state law that the Virginia ABC enforces generally only allows nonprofits and charitable associations to hold fundraising events with an admissions charge where alcohol is sold or guests bring their own bottles.

“I just wish this didn’t have to wind up in court,” Mr. Woody said. “It would be great if everything could go back to the way it was. But it looks like that is not going to happen. The tax issue seems to have made that impossible.”