I’ve been saying this for years.
As far as the world knows, they did. It was the $20 you gave 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?
I always decline, without exception.
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It’s not my duty to pull from my personal funds to support others. I ALWAYS vote to help others with my tax dollars.
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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.
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yes
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
The store takes your donation, then they donate it and take all the credit.
“Store name” donated $1 million to XYZ Charity.
Not only do they get the credit, they also get tax benefits from the donation.
Update: Seems I am incorrect! Thanks for the polite discourse.
This old myth still… They do not get any tax benefits. That’s not how taxes work. The donation is your donation. You can claim it on your own taxes if you itemize deductions.
I don’t think they can get a tax break, but they definitely get the media attention.
Well if they donate that money to their own charity then I’m sure they figure out some way to keep most of it. "Admin costs " and such.
No, that’s not how it works. All they get from the donation is good PR.
A lot of billionaires have their own charities.
You telling me they only do it for PR?
I don’t believe it. That’s just not consistent with their greed.
I’m sure that the charitable image is part of it. But I don’t think they are doing it for only that reason.
They totally do, at least in the USA they do. Well documented corporate practice.
False. This is an oft repeated myth.
I thought so too.
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.
https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/who-gets-tax-benefit-those-checkout-donations-0
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.
Are your itemized deductions usually more than the standard deduction? If not it’s pointless to claim it.
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.
You should at least Google the appropriate laws before being this confidently incorrect.
Bring the proof. Because it’s a myth.
So, let’s see your documentation please.
They make a dollar, they donate a dollar. No change to tax.
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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.
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.
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.
Good to know, thanks!
They don’t claim it on their taxes, they claim it in marketing
Correct, and I did not repudiate that. It is a bargain that I think is worth striking.
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.
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 don’t think they ever disclose which charity the money goes to. That’s the real problem here. I don’t think it would be a bad thing at all to encourage small donations like that, I just have no trust my money is going somewhere I’d approve of.
Huh? I’ve never seen one where the charity name wasn’t front and center on the donation screen.
If I have seen that, it wasn’t a charity I’ve heard of, to my knowledge. Are you in the US?
Yeah, I am. I agree with the ‘never heard of part’, but I’ve always seen the name on the terminal when you select the donation amount.
As I understand, the core issue is that the donation doesn’t happen in your name.
It collectively happens in theirs. Giving them a big tax break for almost no cost to them.
Never donate through a company, do it directly.
You don’t understand correctly. None of what you said is true.
They do not receive tax breaks in any country I am aware of. This is a myth that will not die. The donation is yours, and you can claim it on your own taxes, if you care to itemize your deductions.
A very simple search says otherwise. It is only stated as “unethical”.
Not that they don’t.
Would love to see the result of this search, if you wouldn’t mind linking.
I agree with your last line, but I wouldn’t even be that mad about them taking credit if in the end, the money truly helped people and verifiably so. But when I see it, it’s always “would you like to donate to needy families?” Making you the bad guy for saying no and denying all transparency here.
You should not donate if you do not know what the cause is. I’ve never seen a collection at the till that doesn’t state what charity it benefits. If it’s a nonprofit charity, it will have things like financial reports that you can peruse. I recommend Charity Navigator to see how your donations are spent. I generally don’t donate to any charity that does not report its executive spending.
Because then they’d have to eat into their own profits, and they’d rather die than do that.
Easier to pressure the people they’re already profitting off of to give them more money then claim “we” donated to so-and-so charity for good PR and a tax deduction.
(they do not get to claim your donations as tax deductions, that is a myth)
They often do. It’s pretty common for them to match the customer’s donation.
Usually up to a limit.
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.
You still get the tax deduction if you donate at the till, fyi. The store does not (nor would it make any sense to, anyway - if they claim it as profit, then claim it as donation, the net is zero).
