In my town nearly every single weekend there is some charity or another right in the middle of town at the major intersection with collection canisters going up to cars and asking for money. WTF??
I rather like some of the “a thons”. I’ve participated in several walk-a-thons that were a great place to meet people, get information about the cause you’re walking for (such as arthritis or diabetes), and I got some exercise. Those I like fine. I hate the outward begging for money, myself.
Exactly right, except for the ‘taking the kindness as your own’: he is the one who wants to raise money for, say, the American Cancer Society, so he is the one putting forth the sweat. For my part, as I said, I would consider a payment like part of my household maintenance budget, and wouldn’t try to deduct it as charity. When I said the I would ‘donate’ to the charity, all I meant was that the funds would go directly to the American Cancer Society, without the worker having to report it as income. Full ‘generosity warmth’ and ‘good citizenship’ points go to him.
Isn’t that how it works for these things, anyway? I assume the thoners don’t normally get tax write offs, do they? I mean, all the times I’ve been maneuvered into sponsoring one of these things, I was told to write the check to the name of the charity.
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Is it really? I can see that it might draw in more ‘gross’ dollars, but the overhead of producing this event will eat up a lot of them, as LilyOfTheValley pointed out. I don’t know the raw figures, but I do know that for one local walkathon all the participants were given tshirts, they set up tables with drinks, portapotties, and so forth. Some of that might be donated, of course.
What I know for sure wasn’t were the police details. They had a slew of cops because they had to close down roads and put up a lot of barriers and direct people into detours – police details aren’t cheap.
Still…okay, for the people who want to do them, fine. For the people who will donate to worthy causes this way when they normally wouldn’t, fine.
I still prefer my method, where I have time to investigate my charities. I somehow think that reasonably large donations to a picked handful of charities will result in more ‘good’ than dribbling out small checks all year round to everyone who asks, no matter what the cause is.
I totally agree with the sentiments here. I make my (substantial) charity donations as a direct debit every month. Charities rather like this method as it gives them a guaranteed monthly income. Furthermore, I “giftaid” them the tax, which means they make a further 28p on every £1 I pay, which is an obvious benefit when compared to ad hoc donations, which have to be taken as they are. And for my part, I can reclaim a further 12p on every £1 because I’m a 40% taxpayer, so it’s the most efficient method for me too.
I donate to about 7 or 8 charities. These have been chosen by me to reflect a cross-section of the causes I believe in. The specific charities have been chosen because I think that they perform well within their field. Some actual thought has gone into this, as hard as it is to believe.
Then at work someone comes along for whom I just know this is their one and only charitable contribution of the year. And I’m a bad guy if I don’t support whatever shit-act-of-the-day it is that is being sponsored. Well bullshit. I donate in a month more than they do in a year and all I ask is that I be left to do this in peace. Don’t assume that refusal equates with a stingy-arsed tightfist.
pan
“crap-a-thon”…
Anyone wanna sponser lieu?
Fucking or crapping?
I take fucking.
Okay, you guys want to hear about a ridiculous method of fundraising?
I used to be registered for a temp agency that was all the time sending me on phone-sales jobs, claiming that was all they had available. On the Monday after 9/11 (not their fault, or the foundation’s fault, certainly, but still the worst possible time to be doing this) they sent me to a local office for…either MS or MD, whichever one doesn’t do the walkathon.
It was like this. I was supposed to call local businesses and talk them into doing a fundraiser. If they agreed to this (were dumb enough to, I should say), someone would come to their office and “arrest” them, then they would be brought to the banquet room of a local restaurant and “locked up” for an hour to work the phones and try to get other suckers to donate.
They were supposed to get a free lunch out of this (there must have been some other incentive, but I don’t remember it now). Well, I knew the restaurant, and the food was pretty good, so I got one of their takeout menus, and referred to it while trying to talk people into this hairbrained scheme. Then the supervisor overheard, and told me not to do that, because the free lunch wasn’t being provided by the restaurant! WTF?
I could deal with the objection of “I can’t do the walkathon”, because that’s not what I was asking for, but I couldn’t bring myself to give any of the scripted rebuttals to “I already sent money to the Trade Center/Pentagon victims”. And furthermore, they wanted me to call every business in town. All of them, including places like auto shops and beauty salons, and I know those people can’t leave! And it wouldn’t have been “just” an hour; stuff like that never is.
Plus which, that whole fake-arrest thing was just idiotic. Who would willlingly subject themselves to that kind of humiliation, with the risk that someone would think they were really being arrested? And the real bottom line was, I was calling people up to ask them to volunteer to call other people up, which I already knew sucked, and I just couldn’t do that in good conscience. It ended like all the phone jobs did: I put in my week and they didn’t ask me to come back. Whatever.
I agree on the jail a thons…moderately amusing the first few times this concept was done, but that was years ago…They call you first now to see if you are willing to do the jail thing, and I turn these guys down flat every time now.
As the resident SDMB tax expert, I would be letting you all down if I let this pass without comment. 
The above quoted statement is 100% no-two-ways-about-it wrong.
If Joe goes to Starving’s house and mows Starving’s lawn, then Starving donates $20 to Charity pursuant to a prearranged plan with Joe, then the transaction will be treated as if Starving paid Joe for work and then Joe contributed the pay to charity. It doesn’t matter that Joe never actually had cash in hand. Here are the tax consequences:
-Joe has gross income of $20 and gets a $20 charitable contribution deduction, which cancel each out. However, Joe can only take this deduction if he itemizes. If Joe takes the standard deduction instead of itemizing, then Joe will have to pay tax on the $20 of income.
-Starving does not get to take a charitable contribution deduction because.
-Charity doesn’t have income assuming it’s a 501(c)(whatever).
The main doctrine at work here is the “assignment of income doctrine,” which states that income must be taxed to the person that earns the income. Major cases include Lucas v. Earl and Helvering v. Horst.
Oops, I forgot the last half of the sentence. I’ll just leave it as an exercise to the reader (ain’t tax fun!).
…received a tangible benefit in exchange for the “donation” (or something like that, I would assume).
How’s about it, taxguy, do I win the prize?
I have no response to this, I just thought it would look good in a quote box. In fact, this is a post that would be well-served by frequent quoting in the future, preferably out of context.
Way to go, snacster! Give me your address and I’ll send you a complete copy of the code and regs, but only if you pay shipping (which would be a whole heckuva lot).
A “gift” for tax purposes is something given out of a detached and disinterested generosity with no expectation of getting anything in return.
There’s a case on this where a court held that “donations” to the Church of Scientology weren’t deductible because they were really payments for auditing services (which entail hooking up the person to a biofeedback machine and asking them inane questions for hours on end).
I am confused, TaxGuy. Would Joe have to pay if he walked in a walk-a-thon too?
If not, why not just have a rake-leaves-a-thon which coincidently is held at Baboon’s house in Autumn?
I know a fella that used to raise money for breast cancer research by running from Edmonton to Calgary, non-stop (I think it would take about 2 days.)
He would collect $$, run and then donate the procedes to the Canadian Breast Cancer Society.
Now, this guy really liked running, so I suppose in theory, he was getting enjoyment out of his “a-thon”. That being said, I’d much rather give him the $$ for running than if he did some chores around my house. I think the run would be much harder work.
No, because Starving would actually be making a real donation to the charity and not paying for services performed by Joe for Starving.
Because the law is concerned with the substance of things and not whatever BS spin one can put on it. If you buy a condom from a person for $200 and the person gives you a BJ for free out of the goodness of their heart, do you have any doubt that you have committed a crime?
If you were just being funny, then I was too :D. Some people seriously try arguments that are pretty much the equivalent of what you describe.
What I hate are the Beg-A-Thons that occur at the intersection. Some dolt walks up to my car and wants to wash the windows (never mind its raining) with some filthy squeegy (wonder which gas station he stole it from) in exchange for say a buck. I tell them not to TOUCH my car, and they get pissed off at me. Now you can hardly even go into the grocery store without someone trying to sell you something either before you get inside or just inside the door.
Thanks, TaxGuy! But I think I’ll take a pass on the codes…running out of storage space here. Is the stack bigger than a refrigerator???