December 26, 2017
By Jack Doyle, Amergent President
Might not be a good idea. Unless you stayed at a Holiday Inn…
What if we repeat suggested ideas and let the donors decide?
The top-of-fold front-page story in the Friday December 22, 2017 edition of The Boston Globe was about taxpayers prepaying their future local taxes. The tax paying activity was far greater than expected. And most large states (where you get most of your charitable giving money) will be publishing stories like this.
The whole story is here.
Here are parts of the article all fundraisers can use to our advantage:
“People who have substantial property tax, as well as income tax — because it’s a combined deduction — probably should prepay because it wouldn’t take long to hit the $10,000 limit for next year.”
“…residents have the option of paying online until Dec. 31, but in most communities, payments would have to be made before Dec. 29… that leaves little time for taxpayers to decide what makes financial sense.”
While there are taxpayers rushing to pay future taxes, I expect the vast majority of people who could do this will not do it in time. They will miss the deadline, so they’ll be looking for ways to offset their 2018 taxes.
And let’s be clear, everyone is a taxpayer, but not everyone is a charitable donor. Not all taxpayers will itemize in the future, but all the donors that will itemize have what you need.
I would be reminding your charitable donors (throughout 2018 in many different ways) that if they “lost” their ability to take deductions for all of their state income taxes and local property taxes, they can increase their charitable giving and their combined itemized deductions need not go down for 2018 or ever.
We’ll be suggesting ways to drop this suggestion into regular communications in the New Year. This “loss” of property/income tax deductions can be your gain in charitable giving and can offset any declines from other donors.
