Those charities have huge overhead. Very little money goes to the actual cause.
There are sites to check how much actually goes out. Check before you donate.
My favorite one is when our utility company asks me to donate to help pay for people’s utilities like they aren’t raking in record amount of cash.
Why don’t you help by lowering the prices and being more reasonable? How do I even now you’re actually using the money I donate for people’s bills? That’s a crazy donation request.
Come on now, be reasonable. Lowering the prices would mean they can’t buy their 5th mansion. Just stop being selfish and give them a little more money.
Remember kids, they also get to use the money they guilted off of you to reduce their tax liability because they get credit for donating your money!
This is not true. I am not from the US or a lawyer but these donations sould show up on your receipt and count as your direct donation to the charity. The store is just a middleman and does not get any benefit. Here is a random, semi recent article about it you can find a lot more if you look it up online.
They do not, at least in the US.
It depends on exactly what the store is doing.
If the store is representing the extra charge as a donation to a specific charity, generally, the customer can deduct that.
If it’s far more vague, like, “Give $10 to help poor kids in Africa” the ultimate destination for the funds could be the company’s own ledgers, which it would then use for its own charitable activities and collect the tax deduction, as long as they “help poor kids in Africa.”
And some stores are just lying. CVS, for instance, was sued as part of a class action suit when, after the company pledges $10 million to the American Diabetes Association, then collected money from customers to fund that pledge.
Just FYI this is a sort of scam. The company donates the money on your behalf and they get the tax write-off for your donation while also appearing philanthropic for PR purposes. that’s why they do it.> e fair, I bet these companies strike deals with the charitable organizations to in turn raise visibility of those charities among the company’s customers. Furthermore there is no contractual obligation they actually donate that money or how. They could just be lying to you.
They also store it in a bank before donating to collect interest on it cause why not?
Ah yes further proof that companies don’t give a fuck about anything ixcept making more money.
Furthermore, there is no contractual agreement on how or when they donate that money. So for example those companies might and likely will hold that money in trust to the non-profit. That way the company can use money as a hedge on taxes in future fiscal periods if they had an excess.
Shell’s audacity too…
People that give money for those charities are giving those companies free tax write offs.
You donate $10 or whatever. The company can then claim that $10 as a write off via donation to that charity. Campaign as a whole (either regional or national) collects $1M USD. Corporate accountants write off donation. Tax liability reduced.
That’s not how tax write offs work. The only way to claim that money in a write-off would be for the business to also claim it as revenue. That would even out, with no tax savings. Businesses also don’t handle donations that way, they usually serve as a collection agent that just passes your donations on without being able to claim it towards their revenue or their tax write offs. The only person who can write-off their donation is the person who actually made it.
The reason businesses do it is for marketing. They get to put out a press release saying “They helped donate $10 million to puppies without borders.”
That’s not how tax write offs work
Jerry: So we’re gonna make the Post Office pay for my new stereo now?
Kramer: It’s a write-off for them.
Jerry: How is it a write-off?
Kramer: They just write it off.
Jerry: Write it off what?
Kramer: Jerry, all these big companies, they write off everything.
Jerry: You don’t even know what a write-off is.
Kramer: Do you?
Jerry: No, I don’t.
Kramer: But they do. And they’re the ones writing it off.
I intended on writing this comment yesterday but jerboa timed out on me. It’s a common misconception and I understand how it gets spread, but I wish there was better knowledge and education of how taxes worked in general. Would make it easier for the average person to spot the ways companies do evade taxes, too.
Puppies do not recognize your silly imaginary borders and will commit zoomies across any such lines.
No, that’s not how it works. In order to do so, they’d have to first claim the money received as income.
That said, there are scummy things that they do. At the least, it’s saying “we [bigcorp] donated $1,000,000 to charity” when in reality all that they did was collect it. In other situations, companies like Sobey’s doesn’t actually pass on food bank donations as cash, but rather have then as credit to buy products only from Sobey’s.
First, please don’t link to Reddit…
Many Of The Largest Charities In America Are Giant Money Making Scams
http://thetruthwins.com/archives/many-of-the-largest-charities-in-america-are-giant-money-making-scamsI hate when they pull this shit at drive through fast food. “Would you like to round up to donate to our charity?”
Who knows what the person taking my order thinks about this charity, and what they might do to someone’s food who says no.
Edit: The fact that merely implying a fast food worker wouldn’t be a complete perfect human being gets so many downvotes says a whole lot about this community.
I can assure you that nobody working at the fast food restaurant gives a shit if you donate to charity.
How can you assure me of that lol.
You think nobody at a fast food place is capable of thinking someone is an asshole for declining to donate to charity? And then acting on that?
I used to work fast food and retail, both which forced employees to ask customers to donate at the till. We hated doing it. It is awkward for both the customer and the worker. I would get anxiety when donation drive time of year would come round, and I’d feel relief when the customer either just said no or yes, and didn’t yell at me for asking. The cashier REALLY does not care if you donate or not. And the cashier usually does not make your food, it’s usually someone else doing the cooking, and the cooks aren’t paying attention at all to whether you donated or not.
Same. I got lectured so many times by customers who insisted I was stupid for daring to ask them and acted like I had some sort of personal stake in the charity.
Then most of these same people would buy a ton of lottery tickets when I was in retail.
And I will never ever give these fools my actual phone number for discounts. Just use any area code w/ 867-5309 to get around this.
Jenny Jenny, who can I turn to? You give me something I can hold on to. I know you think I’m like the others before who saw your name and number on the wall
Yeah, this really bothers me. Because in reality, that company that you give money to at checkout is just going to bundle that all up and it’s a donation in their name, used as a tax write-off. You as the shopper might feel nice and warm and fuzzy, but you’re just giving a multimillion or billion dollar company a tax break. Just donate as yourself. If you want to help XYZ cause, do it on your own. My two cents.
That’s not how it works, at least in the US. You are donating as yourself, and can use the donation as a tax write off if you would like.
Thank you for the link. To be clear to anyone too lazy to click (which you should do to verify anyway) this is a source that confirms that businesses don’t get to claim your donation as their own.
They cannot and do not use your donations as a tax write off. That’s not how taxes work.
Those donations you make can help them deduct from taxes, right?
I think that’s a myth as it isn’t income it goes into a separate fund to transfer 1:1.
Even if it is revenue, it is still a net loss. All it does is reduce taxable income, which is still makes the donation a net loss. For anyone not aware, the current federal US corporate income tax rate is 21%. So if a company gives 100 dollars to charity, they only save 21 dollars in taxes, so they are still down roughly 79 dollars, depending on the state taxes of where they are incorporated.
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Here me out before accusing me of being a billionaire toady.
Not really, at least not in the US. Charitable contributions are a deduction from taxable income, not a credit, so it is still a net financial loss to donate.
Where the benefit comes is the PR and power over the organization they donate to and its sphere of influence.
It is a net loss if you donate your own money, in this situation Company isn’t donating from it’s own revenue. It is donating customers money.
If I donated 1000$ and claimed tax deductible it would be a net loss. But if I asked everyone for donations, raised 1000$, donated that and claimed tax deductible that wouldn’t be a net loss.
Thats really jewish anyway to call a deducatable a donation.
fucking antisemite
Bad example, grocery stores usually have small margins and aren’t making a lot of money off of you
This is actually true. But those small margins add up to a huge profit overall. Still, they probably could not afford to donate $20 per shopper.
Hard to believe this when our supermarket giants (Coles, Woolworths) are posting record billions in profits.
They aren’t ‘hard done by’. They make money hand over fist.
If I choose to donate I will do it on my own terms thank you very much.
PSA: most Americans can get up to $300 deducted from their annual taxes through donations.
Then they will say it is more efficient to merge the donations with regular revenue and make bulk donations every quarter or something.
