 Income tax 2022-2023, itemized deductions, gifts to charity. Let's do some wealth preservation with some tax preparation. Most of this information comes from the Schedule A Tax Year 2022 instructions you can find at the IRS website IRS.gov, IRS.gov. Looking at the income tax formula, we're focused on the itemized deductions. Remembering, first half of the income tax formula is in essence an income statement, where we have income minus the equivalent of the expenses being the deductions gets to the equivalent of net income. That being taxable income, everything's flipped on its head for taxes. We want taxable income. In other words, as low as possible, as opposed to normally when we want income as high as possible. In prior sections, we talked about what needs to be included in income. We talked about what can be called the above the line deductions as opposed to the below the line deductions or the adjustments to income to get to the subtotal of the adjusted gross income and important subtotal one used to do calculations for phaseouts of say deductions and credits as income levels rise. Now we're on the below the line deductions, greater of the standard or itemized deductions, focusing specifically on the itemized deductions, which we would only take we can only get an advantage from if they added up to some amount greater than the standard deduction. Looking at page one of the form 1040, we're down here on line number 12 standard deduction or itemized deduction, whichever is larger. Remembering we would only be attaching the schedule a taking the itemized deduction if the amount was above the standard of 12,950 or 25,900 single versus married respectively. This is the schedule a now note when we think about the schedule a the main thing that pushes people over from taking the standard deduction to the itemized deductions is the home ownership because that will typically result in a loan. The loan interest is the big deduction component followed by the property taxes on the home. Once that has been cleared, then we can look more in detail about other itemized deductions which on themselves or in and of themselves would not have pushed people over from the standard to itemized deductions. But once cleared, once we have cleared that itemized deduction threshold, then they help they can help a lot more readily, such as the gifts to charity. So now we're talking about charitable type of contributions. Now note, in prior years, they try what what happened is they increased the standard deduction a few years ago. And when that happens, it actually makes the schedule a a little bit less relevant. So some of these favorite deductions, these are some of the most popular deductions that are on the schedule a were made a little bit less relevant when they increased the standard deduction, which was kind of the point because they were trying to support accounting instruction by clicking the link below, giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical reasonable fashion, making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems, PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again, click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. Simplified the tax code and usually the people that are benefiting from the itemization, the itemized deductions are more wealthy individuals. But you can see how people like their deductions for whatever reason, they kind of seep in we can see what will happen in the future in terms of if you make the itemized deductions less relevant. Then in future law, are they going to try to reverse that lowering the standard deduction or reverse it through increasing inflation. So the standard deduction is not as relevant in terms of a dollar amount because of inflation decrease in the value of the dollar. Or you can imagine some of the stuff from the itemized deductions they creep it over into some other area such as with the charitable deductions they put a little they put a capacity to deduct some charitable contributions on the first page of the 1040. Now that basically got reversed. So that when you think about charitable contributions, you're generally thinking the schedule a which is what we're talking about here. And if you're deducting them on the schedule a you're only going to get a benefit from it if you're basically clearing the standard deduction because otherwise you're not going to get a tax benefit. Now, obviously, when giving to charity, the only reason to give the charity shouldn't you would think be to get a tax benefit, but you can also see why the tax code would try to incentivize, you know, gifts to charity. So this is another one of those instances like many of them on the itemized deduction where it kind of deviates from the standard rule. What's the standard rule if you have an income tax system, you tax you allow people to deduct the expenses deductions, which they needed to consume in order to generate the revenue so you tax people on net income as opposed to gross income, which we can clearly see on say for example a schedule C where you have an income statement income minus the expenses those deductions you needed to expand in order to generate the income gets to the net income. Now, when we talk about other types of income like a W2 income, then the government would like most people to have W2 income because then they can kind of force the employer to take the responsibility for a lot of a lot of the reporting and what not. And they can we can simplify the tax code by saying we're not going to give you any normal kind of business deductions because we assume your employer is going to take care of that stuff. And therefore most of the deductions we kind of think about are these schedule a deductions and they're strange from an income tax system, meaning they're not a natural kind of deduction because they're not necessary in order to generate revenue. They're the government trying to incentivize us in some way or form trying to change our behavior as clearly as the case with the charitable contribution so you can make the case as to whether or not they should be deductible or not and how much that might benefit society or what not. But it's clearly again it's kind of outside of the normal classification of a deduction and it's generally on the itemized deductions. Okay, that said, we've got the standard deductions note that you have to clear the standard deductions before you'll be able to deduct deduct the charitable contributions. So, in other words, if someone is nowhere near clearing these standard deductions it might not be worth your time to be collecting all of the charitable contributions that someone made or spending all your time during the year trying to try to make sure that you you calculate all the all the gifts that to charity that you make right. Because you may not clear, I mean, if you're only doing that for taxes. So, but if you are clearing them, then it does make sense because you need to have the receipts of who you paid if you're going to be taking the deduction for the charitable contributions. So remember that's 12,950 that you would have to clear for single 25,900 for married head of household 19 for and then you've got these deviations and variations if they were over 65 and or blind. 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 per 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 know. 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 will hunting activities. That one is obviously a little bit 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 52526. 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 for slash to ease 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, B.S.O. boys and girls clubs of America care girl scouts. And then we've got Goodwill Industries Red Cross. 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 in certain cultural groups. Non-profit hospitals and medical research organizations. Most non-profit 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 just paying whoever's going to win the campaigns, then they're buying favoritism 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 be not immaterial 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 to 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 is kind of kind of corroded that number down but 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. So in figuring whether a gift is $250 or more, don't combine separate donations. For example, if you gave your church $25 each week for a total of $1,300 treat each $25 payment as a separate gift. So now we're thinking about that $250 limit. If you gave separate donations that add up more than $250, that's different than the one time $250 donation in other words. So if you made donations through payroll deductions, treat each deduction from each paycheck as a separate gift. See publication 526 if you made a separate gift of $250 or more through payroll deduction. Use deduction, puzzle solving. To be contemporaneous, you must get the written acknowledgement from the charitable organization by the date you file your return or the due date including extensions for filing your return whichever is earlier. Don't attach the contemporaneous written acknowledgement to your return instead keep it for your records. So in other words you have to have all this kind of stuff but so that you can verify in the event of an audit. Remember the normal process that the IRS used to kind of take was their normal regulation process is similar to say a cop trying to a police officer trying to regulate someone driving on the freeway. If you speed, you might get away with it 10 times, you know, 9 times out of 10. But that 10th time they're going to hit you with a ticket that's probably high enough that it's going to change your behavior the rest of the 9 times. That's the general concept. Now more and more the IRS is trying to be intrusive and basically try to see every transaction that you have. So they already have all the information for your W-2s, your 1099s and all that kind of stuff. So that's a different kind of method. But the general method that they used to kind of have would have random audits and they would audit you. And then if you had a problem, then they hit you with penalties and interest. So that's kind of what they're doing here still with the charitable contributions. You're not going to try to give them evidence of every charitable contribution. In the future, I would not be surprised if they require charitable contributions to electronically give that information to the IRS or something like that. But we're not there yet. And so if they audited you, then you would have to have the information to support within the audit. So limit on the amount you can deduct. See publication 526 to figure the amount of your deduction if any of the following applies. One, your cash contributions or contributions of ordinary income property are more than 30% of the amount on form 1040 or 1040 SR line 11. Two, your gifts of capital gain property are more than 20% of the amount on form 1040 or 1040 SR line 11. Three, you gave gifts of property that increased in value or gave gifts of the use of property amounts you can't deduct. Certain contributions to charitable organizations to the extent that you receive a state or local tax credit in return for your contribution. So you can see publication 526 for more details and exceptions there. You've got an amount paid to or for the benefit of a college or university in exchange for the right to purchase tickets to an athletic event in the college or university stadium. Obviously there's an exchange going on here. And this is the kind of thing that happens when you've got these weird rules with the with the tax code that are a little bit that are trying to incentivize things different than just you get to deduct something if it was used to help to generate revenue. People start coming up with weird kind of concepts. No, it was a charitable contribution to buy the tickets to the football game. It's like, well, no, I don't think travel expenses, including meals and lodging while away from home performing donated services. Unless there was no significant element of personal pleasure, recreation or vacation in the travel. So you got to make sure you had a horrible time in the traveling. Otherwise you can't deduct it. Did you have any fun? No pictures. If I see any pictures on Facebook or any of the social medias, then no deduction. You got to be looking sad and stern. Any case, political contributions can't do the political contributions because again, that gives influence of wealthy people most likely buying favors. Right. We don't want that dues fees or bills paid to country clubs, lodges for turtle orders or similar groups. So if you're paying dues for the groups to a country club, then you're probably paying to be a member of the country club where you're getting goods and services and whatnot. It doesn't sound like charity cost of raffle, bingo or lottery tickets. But you may be able to deduct these expenses on line 16. C line 16. Later for more information on gambling losses, value of your time or services. So, okay. So then value of blood given to a blood bank. So the transfer of future interest and tangible personal property. Generally, no deduction is allowed until the entire interest has been transferred. And note, this top one shouldn't be bolded like that. It's not like the header of the rest of these. So this is just continuing on with the items that can't be deductible. So the transfer of future interest intangible personal property. Generally, no deduction is allowed until the entire interest has been transferred gifts to individuals and groups that are operated for personal profit gifts to foreign organizations. However, you may be able to deduct gifts to certain U.S. organizations that transfer funds to foreign charities and certain Canadian, Israeli and Mexican charities. So in other words, typically we're talking about the organizations that are United States organizations. You might say, hey, look, I'm trying to help out people that are outside the United States possibly. Well, then you might be able to use the funds to give to U.S. charitable organizations that then give the money or work with possibly other organizations to help people outside of the United States. Otherwise, it's going to get messy for them to try to track money that's being, you know, as a charitable organization kind of donation thing. So gifts to organizations engaged in certain political activities that are of direct financial interest to your trade or business. Obviously, that looks like you're trying to buy something that's going to be beneficial to your business. This doesn't sound like charity. Gifts to group whose purpose is to lobby for changes in the law. That's the whole thing with this political contribution thing. If you're giving money to an organization, even though they're calling themselves a nonprofit, but that organization is lobbying for law changes, which would clearly benefit you, that doesn't sound like charity, right? Gifts to civic leagues, social sports clubs, labor unions and chamber of commerce. Value of benefits received in connection with a contribution to a charitable organization. You can see publication 526 for exceptions cost of tuition. However, you may be able to take an education credit for that one. So line 11, gifts by cash or check. Enter online 11 the total value of gifts you made in cash or by check, including out of pocket expenses. Unless a limit on deducting gifts applies to you for more information about the limits on deducting gifts. See limit on amount you can deduct earlier. If your deduction is limited, you may have a carryover to next year. So in other words, we had some AGI kind of limitations. Most of the time for most people, it's not really a problem. You know, they're not giving more to charity than the limits. But if they do, then the question is, well, what do I just lose the charitable contributions? Well, usually you can carry it forward, do a carryover into the future and see if you meet. If you're under the AGI limit next time, then you should be able to deduct, which you would think you would be at some point in time in the future. Otherwise, you would think you'd be going bankrupt being such a generous fellow. So deduct your, deduct your gifts by cash or check limited. So if your deduction for the gifts you made in cash or by check is limited, see publication 526 to figure the amount you can deduct. Only enter on line 11 the deducted, the deductible value of gifts you made in cash or by check. Record keeping. For any contribution made in cash, regardless of the amount, you must maintain as a record of the contribution, a bank record such as cancel check or credit card statement, or a written record from the charity. So the written record must include the name of the charity date and the amount of the contribution. If you made contributions through payroll deduction, see publication 526 for information on the records you must keep. Don't attach the record to your tax return. Instead, keep it and your other tax records. We talked about that before in the prior line. For, for contributions of $250 or more, you must also have a contemporaneous written acknowledgement from the charitable organization. See gifts of $250 or more earlier that we talked about. You will still need to keep a record of when you made the cash contribution if the contemporaneous written acknowledgement doesn't include that information. Qualified contributions. In general, you can elect to treat gifts by cash or check as qualified contributions if the gift was paid in 2022 to a qualified charitable organization. This election isn't available for contributions to an organization described in IRC 509A3 or for once one more time this election isn't available for contributions to an organization described in IRC Internal Revenue Code 509A3 or for the establishment of a new or maintenance of an existing donor advised fund. For more details there you can see publication 526 and qualified contributions are not subject to a limit based on a percentage of adjusted gross income. However, certain limits may apply if your qualified contributions are more than the amount on form 1040 or 1040 SR line 11. I believe that's the AGI minus all other allowable contributions for details. As you can see publication 526 include any contributions that you elect to treat as qualified contributions and the total amount reported on line 11. Indicate the election by also entering the amount of your qualified contributions on the diet line next to line 11 entry space. Line 12 other than by cash or check. So enter online 12 the total value of your contribution of property other than by cash or check unless a limit on deducting gifts applies to you. So now we've got other formats that we're giving gifts and not just cash for the check. So for more information about the limits on deducting gifts see a limit on the amount you can deduct earlier. If your deduction is limited you may have to carry to the next year. So we got that carry forward thing once again. Deduction for gifts other than by cash or check limited. If your deduction for the contribution of property other than by cash or check is limited you can see publication 526 to figure the amount you can deduct. Only enter online 12 the deductible value of your contribution as property other than by cash or check. Valuing contributions of used items. So here's a common issue that comes up. Well it's a used item. I don't know what the value is. It's a used thing. So if you gave it used items such as clothing or furniture, deduct their fair market value at the time you gave them. Fair market value is what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller when neither has to buy or sell and both are aware of the conditions of the sale. So that although makes sense like in theory is difficult to know because how do you know what a willing buyer and a willing seller would if I knew what a willing buyer would pay for it I would be selling it to the willing buyer and whatnot. So you're going to have to do some estimation right there. So for more details on determining the value of the donated property you can see publication 561. So that's always a frustrating kind of component when you've got these gifts to charity of like clothing and stuff. So deduction more than $500. If the amount of your deduction is more than $500 you must complete and attach Form 8283 for this purpose the quote amount of your deduction in quote means your deduction before applying any income limits that could result in a carryover of contributions. Contribution of motor vehicle, boat or airplane. See I gave away my airplane. So if you deduct more than $500 for a contribution of a motor vehicle, boat or airplane you must also attach a statement from the charitable organization to your pay-per-time. The organization may use Form 1098C to provide the required information. If your total deduction is over $5,000, $500 for certain contributions of clothing and household items discussed next you may also have to get appraisals of the value of the donated property. You can see publication 8283 and its instructions for details there. Contributions of clothing and household items, the common contribution right here. The deduction for these contributions will be allowed only if the items are in good used condition or better. However, this rule doesn't apply to contributions of any single item for which a deduction of more than $500 is claimed and for which you include a qualified appraisal and form 8283 for your tax return. So often times when you're giving clothing you're not going to have it appraised the people that you're giving these household goods to and what not are going to tell say hey yeah I got this bag of stuff and they might give some broad description of the stuff they got but they're not going to try to value the stuff typically is the general rule. So that leaves you hanging in terms of how you're going to value this thing. So record keeping, if you gave property you should keep a receipt and written statement from the organization you gave the property to or a reliable written record that shows the organization's name and address to date, location of the gift and description of the property. For each gift of property you should also keep reliable written records that include how you figured the property's value at the time you gave it if the value was determined by an appraisal keep a signed copy of the appraisal. So I gave my best guess right so there's different methods we can use which we'll see when we look at the software example most likely like a thrift shop method or something like that. So the cost of other basis of property if you must reduce it by an ordinary income or capital gain that would have resulted in the property had been sold at its fair market value how you figured your deduction if you choose to reduce your deduction by gifts of capital gain property and any conditions attached to the gift. So if the gift of property is $250 or more you must also have a contemporaneous written acknowledgments from the charity see gifts of $250 or more earlier for more information form 8283 doesn't satisfy the contemporaneous written acknowledgement requirement and a contemporaneous written acknowledgement isn't a substitute for the other records you may need to keep if you give property. So if your total deduction for gifts of property is over $500 you give less than your entire interest in the property or you made a qualified conservation contribution your record should contain additional information for that you can see publication 526 for more details line 13 carryover from prior years so we saw that if there was a limit on how much you can deduct then you might be able to carry that over if there was a limit in the prior year in this case 2021 that would carry over into the current year possibly if you have a carryover situation if you have a more complex return often being defined in part by having a schedule a itemized deductions I would recommend if having a new client putting the information into the prior year return even if they even if you didn't do the prior year return which might cost more but also it helps you with the rollovers and carryovers and that kind of stuff so carryover from prior year you may have contributions that you couldn't deduct in an earlier year because they exceeded the limit on the amount you could deduct in most cases you have five years to use contributions that were limited in an earlier year so carryover amounts from contributions made in 2020 or 2021 are subject to 60% limitation if you deduct those amounts in 2022 after applying those limits enter the amount of your carryover that you are allowed to deduct this year you can see publication 526 for details usually that's a fairly straightforward situation