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When the cashier asks if I want to round up and donate my 28¢ to help sick kids in hospitals (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 8 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Write-offs aren't magic. There's no way to write off a donation in a way that will reduce your tax burden to lower than it would have been without the donation.

If you donate $100 to charity and write it off, it reduces your income by $100. If you pay 30% in taxes, it reduces your tax burden by 30 bucks, so you're still losing $70 versus not mak8ng the donation.

The difference with these round-up measures is that the donation is only given if the customer pays for it, so it breaks even after the cost of implementation/overhead of the system.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Yes, but the donation is not coming from their income. They give 100 bucks away they did not earn and therefore were not actually taxed on. But those 100 bucks are still reducing their income. So, taking your numbers, they pay 30 bucks less without any loss on their actual income.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago

    It doesn't matter from a taxable income standpoint if you don't give them the money, or if you give it and they donate. They owe the same either way. The only way they would owe the 30 dollars would be if you gave them the 30 bucks and they just kept it. Then it would be 100 dollars in additional income.

    The real cheat isn't on the taxation. It's that they give to non-profits that align with their goals or list the company as a sponsor. When Bass Pro sponsors a high school fishing event it may be making a donation using that non-taxed income from round-ups and getting tax-free advertising.

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