 So enter online 11, the total value of gifts you made in cash or check, including out-of-pocket expenses, unless a limit on deduction gifts applies to you. So we talked a little bit about some of the limits in a prior presentation, remembering that if you're looking at lower-income taxpayers, the problem is they might not be able to get a benefit from giving to charity because they're not itemizing. Higher-income taxpayers usually are not going to hit the limit in terms of how much they can put into a charitable contribution because it's fairly high, but it's possible that they put more money in than they're allowed to put in given the limitations, which will be based on their income or more specifically, typically their adjusted gross income, which will be helpful to determine using tax software typically. So for more information about the limits on deducting gifts, see limit on the amount you can deduct, which we looked at earlier. If your deduction is limited, you may have a carryover to next year. So again, the limitation, not quite common, but could happen for higher-income individuals, depending on what they are doing, then the question is, do you lose the deduction entirely or do we get to carry it back or carry it forward? Typically with the charitable contributions, you might be able to carry it forward. For more information on that, you could see publication 526 for more information. So deduction for gifts by cash or check limited. If your deduction for gifts you made in cash or by check is limited, see publication 526 to figure the amount you can deduct. Only enter online 11, the deductible value of gifts you made in cash or by check on the actual schedule A. 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 a cancel check or credit card statement or a written record from the charity. Now, when we think about the audit trail, the audit trail is really important if we have a legitimate type of deduction. Notice there's multiple kind of concerns with different kinds of payments and how much intervention the government has in individuals' businesses, meaning usually Americans might not like the government tracking all of the things that they are paying for and whatnot. And cash is typically king in that you can spend cash on things and you don't have that kind of audit trail that you typically do have when you have a credit card transactions or electronic transactions. However, if you have a deductible item, if it was like a business expense or if it was something that you expect to deduct on the schedule A, you of course want the audit trail, not because you have to report it, at least not at this time, when you do your taxes on the tax return on the 1040, but in the event of an audit, then they're gonna wanna see that kind of audit trail. You can't just say, well, yeah, I paid it out. I got some money out of the ACM and then I paid it to somebody or he took the money out from underneath my mattress and then I just kind of paid it. Now you wanna have the audit trail so that you can verify the payment. So the written record must include the name of the charity date and amount of the contribution. If you made contributions through payroll deduction, see publication 526 for information on records you must keep. Don't attach the record to your tax return. Instead keep it with your other tax records. So this is one of those items where the IRS does not have like a 1099 or a 1098 telling them how much money you gave to charity. It's something that you still have the capacity to voluntarily report, which is supposed to be our whole tax system, a voluntarily reporting system where they verify with audits in a similar way as if you're driving on the freeway there's a speed limit. You're not gonna get caught all the time if you're speeding, but sometimes the officer might, you might get caught sometimes, right? And the way to apply that same kind of philosophy on taxes is to have some format of random audits, right? So they can check people and see if they're in compliance and if not have the penalties high enough that it will dissuade you from cheating basically in the future. So for contributions of $250 or more, you must also have a contemporaneous written acknowledgement from the charitable organization. So if you're going over that $250 limitation you also want the documentation from the charity not just basically your written records and hopefully an electronic transfer or a cancel check or something like that. Most charitable organizations will flaunt the fact that they're charitable organizations because that's how they make money and hopefully they will be good at reporting to you any gifts over the 250. So you can see gifts of $250 or more earlier for more information which we discussed. 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. Line number 12, other than buy cash or check.