IIRC it’s been demonstrated that “Do you want to round up?” generates more dollars for the charity than "Would you like to donate $1?, because more people are willing to do it if it feels like they’re just donating the digital equivalent of pocket change. I just consider the “round up” prompt to be the modern cashless equivalent of putting out a collection jar for the March of Dimes or whatever.
I do seem to recall seeing some local news story about some city proposing banning the “fill the boot” thing, at least at intersections like that. But that just generated outrage among a certain segment of the population, along the lines of “Why do you hate our firefighters?!”, so the proposal didn’t go anywhere.
The grocery store I work at spells out to us in no uncertain terms that they get no tax deduction for the round-ups and that is a community service for our local charity chapters.
You can count the tax deduction. The store cannot.
The other night we were watching some TV show and that Wounded Warriors Project ad came on. I told my wife I wanted to hear Trace Adkins call it an “adowwable bwanket”. We both LOL’ed.
But they’re not really getting a deduction. They have to claim the money as income in order to write it off as a donation. Yes, it pads their top line and, yes, they can use it to brag about how much “they” donate, but, at least if I understand it correctly, they’re not lowering their taxes.
Look at it from a different angle. Imagine if your employer announced that everyone’s next paycheck would include a $100 bonus, but it has to be donated to the charity of your choice. You’d get to deduct the $100 as a donation, but you’d also be claiming it as income. It’s a wash.
Also worth noting that if there’s any indication that YOU can write it off as a deduction, they wouldn’t be able to do it also. It would just pass through them.
This is, of course, assuming everything is on the up and up. Reporting the deduction but not the income isn’t exactly advanced book cooking (especially if it’s a smaller business that just uses a regular cash register as opposed to a more complex POS).
I’m not quickly finding an IRS cite, but there’s no shortage of cites saying stores collecting donations at the register are not legally allowed to even claim it as income (or a donation for that matter). It must be passed through them directly to the charity.
What happens to the money you donate at the cash register?
This is where you round up your bill to give to a charity designated by the retailer, and the donation amount appears on your receipt. The store serves only as a collection agent for your gift. Assuming the business is following the law, it will not include your donation as part of its business receipts, or income, nor will it claim the charitable gift as an expense.
Stores can’t write off a customer’s point-of-sale donations, because they don’t count as company income, according to tax policy experts.
These people write software that handles ‘round up’ donations:
As the collector and not the donator, you cannot claim a tax benefit on checkout donations from customers. Why? Round-up donations do not count as business income or expenses. In fact, customers would be the ones able to take a tax deduction, if they wanted, using their receipt with the donation amount as proof.
When you receive a checkout donation for a charity, do not include the amount in your business income (it’s not for you!). And, do not include it as a business expense (you’re not the one paying it!).
(I’m glad I finally looked this up as I’ve been pushing back against it for years, but just based on what I know from doing the books at a small business. It’s so prevalent, I always sorta kinda wondered if maybe I was wrong about it.)
I am quite willing to say “no” if I don’t feel like donating or don’t like the circumstances around it. But I donate to charity quite often. I don’t much like giving to most people in traffic, or outside restaurants. I’ll sometimes offer food to those outside grocery stores. Do I want to increase my donation by two dollars to help offset processing costs? Not likely. Why is your processing cost that much, if it is?
Exactly. A good example of this is MADD – Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Who could possibly not be against drunk driving? Who could possibly not sympathize with an organization started by mothers who had lost children to drunk drivers? But MADD, like a drunk driver, has itself gone out of control.
At one point – and I’m not making this up although I no longer have a cite at hand and don’t care to look for one – MADD was trying to pressure lawmakers into requiring every new car to be equipped with a mandatory breathalyzer interlock – meaning no ordinary car owner anywhere could start their car without a breathalyzer test! Aside from such pure insanity, it’s now a fact that here in Ontario, the Ontario Provincial Police who patrol highways and are among the most surly and uncharitable of all our police forces, have now been empowered and required to demand breathalyzers at every traffic stop!
The fact is that MADD and other initiatives have quite properly raised awareness of drunk driving and helped enact more severe penalties for it. But the penalties continue to become more and more draconian, even for a first offense, and still, MADD have to justify their existence and so keep drumming for more. This is what Wikipedia had to say about them:
Radley Balko, an advocate for decriminalizing drunk driving, argued in a December 2002 article that MADD’s policies were becoming overbearing. “In fairness, MADD deserves credit for raising awareness of the dangers of driving while intoxicated. It was almost certainly MADD’s dogged efforts to spark public debate that effected the drop in fatalities since 1980, when Candy Lightner founded the group after her daughter was killed by a drunk driver,” Balko wrote. “But MADD is at heart a bureaucracy, a big one. It boasts an annual budget of $45 million, $12 million of which pays for salaries, pensions and benefits. Bureaucracies don’t change easily, even when the problems they were created to address change.” CharityWatch gives MADD a “C−” grade.
As useful as they may once have been, they’re now in my bad books – a charity overflowing with money and now intent on justifying their existence. I’ve occasionally seen red ribbons in support of MADD that you can buy, usually at liquor stores. I just ignore them, but if someone approached me and tried to sell me one, it would be hard to resist not saying something pretty rude.
Why is this problematic? There’s always some percentage of people driving under the influence. Why not check while they’re already stopped?
In another post a few days ago, it was said that in Norway or Finland (I can’t remember which!) all busses are equipped with alcohol inter devices for the driver.
For the exact same reason that traffic stops themselves aren’t legal without a valid justification. For the exact same reason that during a traffic stop a police officer can’t conduct an exhaustive search of your car or your entire RV just because he doesn’t like your face.
ETA: Sobriety tests can already be done after a traffic stop when there is reason to do so.
I’m not a fan of creeping authoritarianism or the gradual erosion of civil liberties. The problem of drunk driving is being generally well handled when police observe aberrant driving behaviours and deal with them accordingly, and by strict penalties which IMHO are not strict enough in many US jurisdictions. But not by the automatic presumption that every honest citizen is probably a criminal.
I’ve grown sick of the constant begging as well. I stopped giving to sidewalk beggars out of concern for their safety. I worry about them tripping over all the “Help Wanted” sidewalk signs while hurrying toward me.
As to the others, we gave to a few charities during the pandemic and discovered that most (or all) of them share your email and we end up spammed into oblivion. Ditto for our PO Box which became so full of beggar-mail the post office demanded we rent a larger one. I have a special hatred toward many of the physical-mail beggars, as I’m sick of their trick of salting the envelopes with various amounts of change. This isn’t some generosity gimmick, it’s a “fuck you” message to those of us who’d throw the entire thing into the shredder without opening it and rummaging through it. So we toss those into the outside firepit and burn them.
Currently we’ve adopted a rigid policy of no digital giving, to anyone, any group, for any reason, period. We will wait for whatever time must pass for the barrage of beggars to subside. It’s reduced somewhat, but not enough to reconsider our “no charity” rules. The other rigid element of our policy is no giving from automobiles - period.
As far as tipping, we’ve reduced dining out to almost never, IIRC just once last year while on vacation. The expense and hassle aren’t worth it, and we enjoy preparing our own. When out during the day, I limit fast food places to those I’m sure won’t dun me (Chik-Fil-A).
Yeah - JustGiving and other money collection sites have what I consider a big percentage (5-10%) as their default. Sure, I don’t mind adding a few pennies to cover processing costs, but not that much.
Last year I made a donation through JustGiving and inadvertently changed the amount to give them to £50 instead of £0.50 (making it 500% of the donation I was making). OK, user error, but it annoyed me there was no check in place to catch it before it was too late (whereas I had seen such checks in place on restaurant card machines). I probably could have claimed it back but decided to just make it my lifetime contribution to that site and now always change it to zero with a clear conscience.
There was nothing “subtle” about it IME. When I was at GE, the manager of each group assigned a victim to be the United Way representative for the annual drive. Their job was to ask every single coworker to donate some outrageous amount of their paycheck - like 2%, pretax - to UW. Of course, as the rep, you were expected/required to donate at least 2% to set a good example. Any employee who refused to donate anything had to sign a form indicating that. The voluntold UW rep’s success rate was part of their annual review as well. Flat out extortion, honestly, which is why the UW has not and will never get another penny from me.
Wow! That’s even more extreme that anything I’ve experienced. Yes, fuck those guys, they’re basically just a self-serving racket now. Which is a shame because there really are so many needy causes.
That was by far the worst I’ve ever seen. I’ve worked other places that would pester you with daily emails during the campaign, but nothing like GE. And to be clear, I don’t hold the individual managers responsible, they were certainly getting their orders from much higher up.
We had United Way for years. I think it was inertia more than anything. Then, there were those big scandals in the 80s? 90s? So, they dumped United Way, but kept an Employee Contributions campaign. There was a little pressure, but nothing you couldn’t resist, and they knew better than to make any review based on it. But the one thing that really improved the process was opening it up to allocate your donation to any 5013c you wanted. I used to change my donation recipient every year – spread the wealth. Plus, I itemized back then, and it made doing taxes really easy. It was all in my contributions records.
It’s a shame they use those tactics because my organization receives a hefty number of grants from United Way’s local division. United Way has funded food and shelter for our domestic violence survivors, staff training and consulting, our art therapist, and more. I’m currently managing about five United Way grants as we speak. They also coordinate and distribute funding from our county. And they genuinely care. Their people are always sending us additional resources when they see them. I’m really not sure what we would do without their support.
Unfortunately that funding is also drying up. Every year we get less. This coincides with a general decrease in funding nationwide for domestic violence shelters so I’m not blaming United Way.