This. It’s illegal for them to take the deduction. The only way they could is if they claimed your donation as income then claimed it as a deduction, which would get them nowhere.
I’m not saying trust big companies, but on the checkout charity things I think the risk far outweighs the reward for them to cheat.
One thing I do wonder about is if they put the donated money into an account and collect interest on it before donating it. I’ve never been able to find an answer to that, but I suspect it’s the same. Big risk, little reward.
At a large corporation, there would be employees setting up the charity drive, the accounting department, probably the legal department involved. They’d need to keep track of the charity money coming in, make sure it’s not counted as charity, make sure it’s not counted as income, make sure none of the departments ask questions, pay the charity from money that is not shown as income or charity, get a receipt from the charity saying the money came from the company’s money and not the big nationwide charity drive they held for 6 months that ended last week, file taxes saying they paid X amount to charity from company money but they can’t show it coming from company money.
Not a single person involved in this would profit from it and most would be mortified at what they saw. The company would barely even profit from it. I mean, Wal-mart getting a tax deduction for a million dollars they raised for charity would probably pay for the remodeling of the deli department at one store.
This is a situation where not only are the risks not worth it, the work isn’t worth it. It’s a thousand times easier to just do it right.
It’s not really for the write off. Walmart doesn’t give a shit about your paltry pennies. It’s mostly so they get the PR and the ability to hand over a giant check and say ‘they’ raised such and such. The amount on the check will seem like a large number to idiots but it will be a relatively small number in comparison to profits etc.
You’re effectively bank rolling their advertising / good will campaign.
It was very dodgy for a while, like Woolies owned the charity you were donating to, and the name was weird too. Basically “give us extra money and we might give homeless people our expired food items instead of throwing them in the trash” so you’re paying them to deal with their own waste. But the name was like, Support Local Farmers or something I don’t remember. Then they tightened the laws, and now it’s only moderately dodgy because that money isn’t separated out properly and only a percentage of it ends up going to the charity. That’s the last I heard of it in Australia at least.
I’ve been told that’s not how it works. Mostly because you donated it, so it’s your write off. I don’t know though.
This. It’s illegal for them to take the deduction. The only way they could is if they claimed your donation as income then claimed it as a deduction, which would get them nowhere.
I’m not saying trust big companies, but on the checkout charity things I think the risk far outweighs the reward for them to cheat.
One thing I do wonder about is if they put the donated money into an account and collect interest on it before donating it. I’ve never been able to find an answer to that, but I suspect it’s the same. Big risk, little reward.
Laws don’t mean anything anymore if they’re simply not enforced and the criminals are in charge
That doesn’t mean it’s happening.
At a large corporation, there would be employees setting up the charity drive, the accounting department, probably the legal department involved. They’d need to keep track of the charity money coming in, make sure it’s not counted as charity, make sure it’s not counted as income, make sure none of the departments ask questions, pay the charity from money that is not shown as income or charity, get a receipt from the charity saying the money came from the company’s money and not the big nationwide charity drive they held for 6 months that ended last week, file taxes saying they paid X amount to charity from company money but they can’t show it coming from company money.
Not a single person involved in this would profit from it and most would be mortified at what they saw. The company would barely even profit from it. I mean, Wal-mart getting a tax deduction for a million dollars they raised for charity would probably pay for the remodeling of the deli department at one store.
This is a situation where not only are the risks not worth it, the work isn’t worth it. It’s a thousand times easier to just do it right.
It’s not really for the write off. Walmart doesn’t give a shit about your paltry pennies. It’s mostly so they get the PR and the ability to hand over a giant check and say ‘they’ raised such and such. The amount on the check will seem like a large number to idiots but it will be a relatively small number in comparison to profits etc.
You’re effectively bank rolling their advertising / good will campaign.
It was very dodgy for a while, like Woolies owned the charity you were donating to, and the name was weird too. Basically “give us extra money and we might give homeless people our expired food items instead of throwing them in the trash” so you’re paying them to deal with their own waste. But the name was like, Support Local Farmers or something I don’t remember. Then they tightened the laws, and now it’s only moderately dodgy because that money isn’t separated out properly and only a percentage of it ends up going to the charity. That’s the last I heard of it in Australia at least.
I would hope so, do they provide a tax receipt at the end of the transaction?
If you ask for a receipt, yeah.