Mickey7Don't we all hate this
Retro_unlimitedThe store takes your donation, then they donate it and take all the credit.
“Store name” donated $1 million to XYZ Charity.
I don’t think they can get a tax break, but they definitely get the media attention.
They totally do, at least in the USA they do. Well documented corporate practice.
Assuming the business is following the law, it will not include your donation as part of its business receipts, or income, nor will it claim the charitable gift as an expense.
In other words, your gift has zero impact on the store’s income taxes. Keep in mind that the store chooses the receiving charity, so make sure it is one you can support. As a customer, the donation will appear on your receipt and you can claim it as a charitable deduction when you file your income tax return.
The receipt thing is a lifeprotip. I didn’t know that.
I always donate directly to organizations because I didn’t think I could get taxes back on it if you donate in a store.
Thank you.
IANAL! Double check.
I prefer “NSA” to “IANAL” because"No soy abogado" means “I’m not a lawyer” in spanish, which is nice because then we don’t have to inadvertently think OP just told everyone he engages in anal sex every time we see the acronym.
But then people just think you’re a dirty government spy. I prefer “IDPL” for “I don’t practice law” because it’s fun to pronounce.
Ah yes I like IDPL better. Let’s promote it until everyone adopts it.
🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞NSA
Yeah, non-sexualized anal is totally better ;-)
Bring the proof. Because it’s a myth.
www.usatoday.com/story/news/…/7622379002/
So, let’s see your documentation please.
False. This is an oft repeated myth.
This is what everyone has been saying for years, but I think it’s been debunked for years.
iamthetotThey make a dollar, they donate a dollar. No change to tax.
They take the media credit, and then they get the tax credit, too. Couldn’t agree more, we rent U-Hauls and they ask for donations too and I tell my customers exactly that, don’t donate to the so they can donate all the money and save paying some taxes.
Any time you say no to some donation request, know that saying no is the normal (statistical) thing to do. Otherwise, the donation request wouldn’t exist: People democratically said no to this (either directly or representatives) at the tax level so we need external money gathering tools.
If you’re so inclined, set up a monthly or annual donation directly to a cause you care about. Then you can ignore those prompts and have a chip on your shoulder about it, and you get the tax deduction instead of Profits Incorporated getting it.
TrickDacyI didn’t shop here to lower the corporation’s tax liability, thanks! Corporate can donate their own salary.
Piss on cash register donation begging corporations
Oh, for Pete’s sake! If you don’t want to donate, don’t donate, but at least get the facts, please. There’s plenty of stuff in the world to get angry about right now that’s real. In reality:
- The store has to book your donation as “unearned revenue,” that is, money it collected, but is not theirs. Charitable donations collected through the registers do not count as the store’s income. Giving the lump sum to the charity does not count as a store expense. The store is merely a custodian of the money until transferring it to the charity.
- YOU get the tax deduction, not the store. If you itemize your tax deductions (and do not take the standard deduction), you can submit the register receipt as proof of a donation, and get the tax benefit.
- The media coverage of these donations for PR benefit is basically nil. Off the top of your head, name the last 3 feel-good stories about grocery store charity donations that you saw in the news. (Can you name even one? I can’t.)
- Stores often do add some of their own money to the donation, but charitable donations are an “above the line” adjustment to income, not a “below the line” refundable credit. That is, the value of the write-off is the amount of tax the store avoided, which is always less then the amount of money it gave.
Last time I was at a grocery, and the payment terminal asked my to round up, I did. I see it as a win-win-win. I win because I can feel good about donating, even if it was only 14 cents. The store wins by some of my good feelings transferring to it; as well, the people who run the store are human, and also want to feel good about themselves by helping a charity. The charity itself wins by getting a couple thousand dollars that it wouldn’t have received otherwise. Despite my best intentions, I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to donate to that organization, and absolutely would not have bothered to give a tiny amount like 14 cents. But every little bit helps, and a few cents each from hundreds people adds up. I see this as a frictionless way to do some good.
Source: Used to work at a family-owned grocery store.
RememberTheApollo_You think people working at a multibillion dollar grocery chain give a crap about your 14¢ round-up? It’s implied this is not some “family owned” small store.
Do you think anyone keeps grocery receipts at tax time to claim the $5 write off over the year with 30 receipt’s worth of round-ups?
The meme is essentially true. A big corp is asking a nobody who is probably trying to save some cash to give a billion dollar operation money so the Big Corp gets the brownie points for the donation. They don’t give a shit about you other than “Big Grocer & ‘customers’” donate $$$.
The only two points you made that I agree with are “just say no” if you don’t want to, and donate if you like the good feels. Just make sure Big Grocery is donating to a charity that is decent and doesn’t soak up most of the $ in admin costs.
The meme is fine, it’s the comments. If a business is following the law, the business must pass along the full amount of donated money, and does not get a tax deduction. I tried to look up some numbers, and found that many companies do not even report the amounts they collect, so they’re not doing it for media coverage. Agree with me or not, those are the facts.
I donate a fair bit of money relative to my income bracket. Sometimes it’s directly to places that need it. Sometimes it’s by donating goods instead of money. Sometimes it’s by entering raffles at work, or buying candy from kids at the store, or a coupon book from veterans.
And sometimes it’s by donating at the till. Look, corpos suck. But one of the only good things they do is solicit donations at the till.
Stores process thousands and thousands of transactions a day, and if even only a handful of those people decide to round up or add a little bit more on top, it adds up to so much money for good causes that I guarantee would not otherwise ever get donated.
And please, please can we put this myth to rest: in no country that I am aware of can a company claim your donations on their taxes. Those donations are yours and yes, you can claim them on your taxes if you are willing to do the work of keeping the receipt and itemizing your deductions. I do this every single year.
They don’t claim it on their taxes, they claim it in marketing
ZagorathThose donations are yours and yes, you can claim them on your taxes if you are willing to do the work of keeping the receipt and itemizing your deductions. I do this every single year.
Fwiw in Australia only donations over $2 are tax deductible. So round-up donations probably aren’t, unless you’re rounding from $47.95 to $50 or something.
Donations through a non profit, where the CEO and/or some of their family are on the board and paid a big salary from those donations, so only a fraction makes it to the stated goal.
I had a dream where pretty much the same prompt came up but it was offering me a discount for being poor
DarkFutureI always decline, without exception.
It’s not my duty to pull from my personal funds to support others. I ALWAYS vote to help others with my tax dollars.
I don’t actually know where my money is going. I haven’t researched these organizations. I don’t know where my money ends up.
MacN'CheezusSo what you’re saying is you’d rather have your money taken from you by force, as long as it’s lawful and you get to pretend you have a say in how it’s used…
I think what they are saying is that they’d rather the burden be distributed equitably across the populace instead of placing the burden entirely on good people.
You really think bad people pay taxes? They’re the ones collecting them!
Well they will make the donation, but they’ll do it with your money, and then they’ll take the tax deduction for it, and reward themselves with a nice fat end of year bonus from the tax savings. Isn’t capitalism fun?
That’s not how tax deductions work. All the write-offs allow is for them to not count the money donated as income, so they make the same amount of money on the sale whether or not you donate.
The benefit to the company is PR or donating to a non-profit with a mission that aligns with their corporate goals. For instance, Bass Pro may ask you to donate to wildlands preservation non-profits that maintain environments in which people fish and hunt.
But isn’t it true that whatever they don’t pay in taxes via writeoffs, they get to keep and use however they want? They might choose not to give themselves a bigger bonus with those savings on taxes, but…I do doubt it for some reason
If they donate money out of their own profits, they CAN write that off. Which of course, confusingly, is also money you gave them, except it’s money you gave them in order to buy their products, not for the purpose of having them donate it.
It ends up being net zero. They’re only writing off the money you donated. They still have to count the money you donated towards their overall revenue, increasing their tax bill, but then they pass the donation on, allowing them to write it off, reducing their overall revenue (and thus their tax bill) to what it would have been if you hadn’t donated.
Write-offs are deductions from income, not reductions in taxes owed. They only get to deduct the taxes they would have paid if they had kept the donations.
Let’s imagine their annual income was $10,000,000. Their nominal tax rate would have them owing $2,100,000.
If they received a $100,000 in donations, that would make their income 10,100,000. But with the donations they could write off the 100 grand, reducing their tax bill by $21,000, for a total of $2,100,000.
Either way, they pay the same in taxes with or without the donations.
I stand corrected, thanks! I always assume they’re finding a way to directly enrich themselves further, because they often are.
The amount of misconceptions and misunderstandings regarding how taxes work is astounding.
See also: tax brackets. No, getting bumped up to the next tax bracket won’t cause you to make less money after taxes. There are some benefits cliffs that do work like this (e.g. ACA subsidies), but that’s not income taxes work.
That is wrong on so many levels, but it is so true. What if our brains actually think this?
and you didn’t give them $20 so they had to let the orphans starve, nothing they could do.
daggermoonI’ve been saying this for years.
I often pass an intersection where a woman is selling ice cold water bottles, and in the other direction, her husband (I assume) is selling flowers. I almost always buy 2 bottles of water from her.
I know that my money is going directly to help a hard working family, instead of some “charity,” where only about 20% goes to the actual research, while executives take millions in compensation.
I used to watch this happen all the time in South Carolina where I used to live… But I also used to do it myself, I’d be like, well hell if we’re gonna sit out here and panhandle, we might as well do it in a group! You knew one thing - that caused a need for - the other thing and then - that other thing would belong to the next thing. It’s a good base strategy.
That money is going to pedophiles who will in return feed the children
w3dd1e