edit: you should also know that you should just donate directly to the charity, but I thought that was common knowledge
Apparently the idea that it gives corporations a tax break is a misconception, rather, YOU get the tax break! edit: yes you have to have receipts, thought that was common knowledge and didn’t think i needed a disclaimer
Thanks to @[email protected], @[email protected], and @[email protected] for that info!
edit: sorry for posting this, leaving it up so it’s not a “dirty delete”
from your post history it seems you might not be in the us so i’m going to try and clarify
soooo i have yet to file taxes (i’m disabled and have never made enough to file) but from my understanding, how taxes work in the us vs outside of the us is different
the government doesn’t tell you what you owe or what to deduct… you tell them what you owe, what you’re deducting, and hope you didn’t mess up somewhere unless you want to be shipped off the el salvador
so i believe neither my post nor their comment is bs, but if i’m wrong i’m happy to be corrected
You have to file no matter what. You’re risking an IRS investigation you probably can’t afford.
Your post isnt wrong, but you just have to keep in mind that for the huge majority of people in the US, keeping receipts of small donations is pointless, because they will never exceed the standard deduction, which every filer gets. As an example, the 2025 standard deduction for single filers in 2025 is 15,750.
So unless all your charity deductions and other deductions exceed that amount, you should be taking the standard deduction anyways, and all the receipts count for nothing, and are a waste of time to enter.
Yeah no gotcha, I’ve known it to work similarly. Also, didn’t mean it as an attack on you per se (unless you wrote the headline I guess).
The situation seems to me to be that companies obviously assume (I’d guess rightly) that a huge majority of people don’t keep these itemised receipts in order to claim the tax from these minuscule transactions themselves, thus enabling the company to get the tax break.
The company has no way of knowing whether the person claimed the donation, so that wouldn’t be possible.
The company does it entirely for the PR.
Well, file taxes and tell us how that went. Because if you didn’t keep the receipts as a record of the exact amount and proof of those donations, you don’t get to submit them for a tax break. Vibes and memories don’t cut it for tax deductions.
So yeah the customer technically gets that tax break, but its more work than it’s worth to actually claim it.
yeah? never said otherwise.