 So gifts to charity. So you can deduct contributions or gifts you give to organizations that are religious, charitable, educational, scientific or literary in purpose. So obviously when we give to charity and you give a tax incentive for giving to charity, then that does also open up people to try to take advantage of the tax benefit. Anytime the government basically gives out money by reducing taxes or reduces the money they're going to take or whatever, then people might try to manipulate the system so then they have to get kind of literal in terms of what actually qualifies as a charity. So generally the religious, charitable, educational, scientific, literary in purpose. So you can also deduct what you gave to organizations that work to prevent cruelty to children or animals like the public school system or something that they're trying to, no, I'm just kidding. You can do that. And then we've got the certain willing captains may be able to deduct expenses paid in 2022 for Native Alaskan subsistence bowel head wheel hunting activities. That one is obviously a little bit specific to a specific area and industry. I don't know much about that one, but if you want to check that one out, it's in publication 526. You can look it up for more detail. So to verify an organization's charitable status, you can. So if you're going to deal with an organization, you got to say, Hey, are you a legit charitable organization? And you could check them out by saying, check with the organization to which you paid the donation. The organization should be able to provide you with a verification of the charitable status. So obviously, when you give to charity, oftentimes, again, you want to avoid the scammers out there. One way to do that is to do your research on the charity and make sure that you're not giving just in terms of a social pressure type of situation. And you're saying, no, I'm going to give on my own terms and I'm going to check you out. I'm going to see if my money is going to go better there than to somewhere else. I'm already given a bunch of money to a horribly inefficient charitable type of organization, the government. I'd rather, if I'm going to give my money away so that I don't have to give it to the government, give it to someone who spends it a little bit more wisely and efficiently. You know, that's the whole point. In any case, use our online search tool at irs.gov, forward slash to see if an organization is eligible to receive tax deductible contributions, publication 78 data. So example of qualified charitable organizations. The following gives the following list gives some examples of qualified organizations see publication 526 for more examples, churches, mosques, synagogues, temples and other religious organizations, scouts, BSO boys and girls clubs of America care, girl scouts. And then we've got Goodwill industries, Red Cross volunteers are directed to your campsite, Salvation Army and United Ways fraternal orders. If the gifts will be used for the purpose listed under gifts to charity earlier, veterans and certain cultural groups, nonprofit hospitals and medical research organizations, most nonprofit educational organizations such as colleges, but only if your contribution isn't a substitute for tuition other enrollments. So obviously you can't say, yeah, I'm giving them a gift to charity and they gave me enrollment. Well, sounds like you paid tuition with the contribution there. So no, federal, state and local governments if the gifts are solely for public purpose. Now it also gets gets messy when giving money to like the government because because they don't want it to be political in nature, which is almost impossible. But they're going to try to parse that line because if you're giving stuff to a political party in particular, then you're giving a campaign kind of kind of contribution. And the fear is that if wealthy individuals can drive the political process by by just paying whoever's going to win the campaigns, then their buying favoritism is the is the is the fear and I think a valid one. So amounts you can deduct contributions can be cash property or out of pocket expenses you pay to do volunteer work for the kinds of organizations described earlier. So if you drove and to and from the volunteer work, you can you can take the actual cost of gas and oil or 14 cents a mile. So you've got kind of a mileage method. The mileage method rate is different than by the way, most the rate for like a schedule C. So when you're trying to apply like a mileage method rate to different types of things, such as here for the charitable or for the medical, if you had mileage for the medical, for some reason, they don't unify all the rates and they're different laws and they kind of change at different rates as you can see. So make sure you're applying the right one to the right place software is of course helpful for doing that. Add parking and tolls to the amount you claim under either method, but don't deduct any amounts that were repaid to you. So if you got reimbursed for them, then you can't deduct them because you didn't really pay them because you got the money back gifts from which you benefit. If you made a gift and received a benefit in return, such as food, entertainment or merchandise, you can generally only deduct the amount that is more than the value of the benefit. So obviously if you go a lot of times, these charitable organizations give a nice banquet or something like that. You get to listen to some popular person, talk about something for whatever reason as if they know what they're talking about or like you should be listening to them about something they have nothing to do with or something like that. And then it's a charity because it's a really expensive dinner. So then of course you've got to think well how much of this was charity and how much of it was paying for the dinner I had, but this rule doesn't apply to certain membership benefits provided in return for an annual payment of $75 or less or to certain items or benefits of token value. So whenever like you're in the airport and they give you a flower or something like that and you're like and you're in reciprocity, you give them money, right? That's why they give you the flower. It's a totally manipulative thing. I swear it's not out of the sometimes it's out of the kindness of the heart possibly, but a lot of times feels awfully manipulative. But in any case, you don't have to try to figure out the value of the flower because it would would be not in material you would think. So but for details on that publication 526 example, you pay $70 to a charitable organization to attend a fundraising dinner and the value of the dinner was $40. You can deduct only $30 gifts of $250 or more. You can deduct a gift of $250 or more only if you have a contemporaneous written acknowledgement from the charitable organization showing the information in one and two next. One, the amount of money contributed and a description, but not value of any property donated. And two, whether the organization did or didn't give you any goods or services in return for your contribution because now we're talking about more significant contributions here. Even though that's not all that significant these days. Inflation, it's kind of kind of corroded that number down. But in any case, if you did receive any goods or services, a description and estimate of the value must be included. If you received only intangible religious benefits such as admission to the religious ceremony, the organization must state this, but it doesn't have to describe or value the benefit.