My favorite one is when our utility company asks me to donate to help pay for people’s utilities like they aren’t raking in record amount of cash.
Why don’t you help by lowering the prices and being more reasonable? How do I even now you’re actually using the money I donate for people’s bills? That’s a crazy donation request.
Come on now, be reasonable. Lowering the prices would mean they can’t buy their 5th mansion. Just stop being selfish and give them a little more money.
Remember kids, they also get to use the money they guilted off of you to reduce their tax liability because they get credit for donating your money!
This is not true. I am not from the US or a lawyer but these donations sould show up on your receipt and count as your direct donation to the charity. The store is just a middleman and does not get any benefit. Here is a random, semi recent article about it you can find a lot more if you look it up online.
I used to work for a retail chain many years ago and I do not think this is true for everywhere.
When we were asking for donations it was tracked and if our location didn’t get enough donations our store manager would get talked to by his district manager. I don’t know exactly what happened to the money once it was donated, but I don’t think they would have been so adamant about getting the donations if they didn’t make anything from it.
This was like 20 years ago though, maybe its different now.
does not get any benefitI’d say free PR is still a benefit. A bullshitter’s benefit
They do not, at least in the US.
It depends on exactly what the store is doing.
If the store is representing the extra charge as a donation to a specific charity, generally, the customer can deduct that.
If it’s far more vague, like, “Give $10 to help poor kids in Africa” the ultimate destination for the funds could be the company’s own ledgers, which it would then use for its own charitable activities and collect the tax deduction, as long as they “help poor kids in Africa.”
And some stores are just lying. CVS, for instance, was sued as part of a class action suit when, after the company pledges $10 million to the American Diabetes Association, then collected money from customers to fund that pledge.
Yep, found the case you referred to…
First, please don’t link to Reddit…
Many Of The Largest Charities In America Are Giant Money Making Scams
http://thetruthwins.com/archives/many-of-the-largest-charities-in-america-are-giant-money-making-scamsThose donations you make can help them deduct from taxes, right?
Here me out before accusing me of being a billionaire toady.
Not really, at least not in the US. Charitable contributions are a deduction from taxable income, not a credit, so it is still a net financial loss to donate.
Where the benefit comes is the PR and power over the organization they donate to and its sphere of influence.
It is a net loss if you donate your own money, in this situation Company isn’t donating from its own revenue. It is donating customers money.
If I donated 1000$ and claimed tax deductible it would be a net loss. But if I asked everyone for donations, raised 1000$, donated that and claimed tax deductible that wouldn’t be a net loss.
I think that’s a myth as it isn’t income it goes into a separate fund to transfer 1:1.
Even if it is revenue, it is still a net loss. All it does is reduce taxable income, which is still makes the donation a net loss. For anyone not aware, the current federal US corporate income tax rate is 21%. So if a company gives 100 dollars to charity, they only save 21 dollars in taxes, so they are still down roughly 79 dollars, depending on the state taxes of where they are incorporated.
Yes, which is why you should donate yourself if you are inclined to do so.
No, but you should still donate yourself. It allows you to focus on charities that you care the most about and which you can research as having the greatest potential positive impact.
If you give $1 to Grocery Store to donate to Cause, what happens is Grocery Store gains $1 of taxable revenue, then they remove that $1 of taxable revenue with the deduction. All the deductions do is make it so that Grocery Store neither gains nor loses money from the forwarded donations. They simply aren’t paying taxes on the money you gave them to donate.
The rules for this are good.
Shell’s audacity too…
And redirecting you attention on to the “offsets” scam too.
Ever wonder why climate change is such a problem if 1.5 pence per liter petroleum burnt can undo the damage? Spoiler: it can’t. You can’t sequester CO² for that cheap, and CO² isn’t the only issue. “Offsets” are not certified by any trustworthy third party, and companies intentionally don’t pry too much, so they can say “Oh sorry, didn’t know” if anyone investigates and discovers they did squat-all.
Those charities have huge overhead. Very little money goes to the actual cause.
There are sites to check how much actually goes out. Check before you donate.
Or just…donate the perfectly good food they constantly throw out into the cadged dumpsters designed to keep homeless people out… Litteraly would cost them nothing…
“But if we feed them then those broke homeless people won’t come in and spend their (nonexistent) money on our food!” -upper management
And there in lies the real problem, they are more scared of their quarterly growth reports and some imaginary ‘lawsuit’ from homeless people (which I believe in most places you can’t sue over donated food) than they care about keeping people alive.
As much as I hate Kroger, Fred Meyer’s donates a LOT of food. Not sure about other stores but I remember a story saying they were one of the top contributors for perishables.
Just FYI this is a sort of scam.
The company donates the money on your behalf and they get the tax write-off for your donation while also appearing philanthropic for PR purposes. that’s why they do it.EDIT: US companies cannot do this in the US you can claim up to $300 on taxes. This is legit in the US.
@zombuey I’ve heard that a lot, but it is apparently not true unless the company claims your donation as a profit and then writes it off, which negates any tax benefit. I think it’s more just a PR thing to make you feel good about that company while using your own money.
They cannot claim it as profit if they are following the law.
They cannot, and do not, claim your donations on their taxes.
They also store it in a bank before donating to collect interest on it cause why not?
Ah yes further proof that companies don’t give a fuck about anything ixcept making more money.
Furthermore, there is no contractual agreement on how or when they donate that money. So for example those companies might and likely will hold that money in trust to the non-profit. That way the company can use money as a hedge on taxes in future fiscal periods if they had an excess.
Just wait until you get a tip prompt on a self checkout kiosk…
Don’t tip on those things. The company supplying those things are getting the cut. And it’s mandatory. They are an office space scam.
I hate when they pull this shit at drive through fast food. “Would you like to round up to donate to our charity?”
Who knows what the person taking my order thinks about this charity, and what they might do to someone’s food who says no.
I can assure you that nobody working at the fast food restaurant gives a shit if you donate to charity.
How can you assure me of that lol.
You think nobody at a fast food place is capable of thinking someone is an asshole for declining to donate to charity? And then acting on that?
I used to work fast food and retail, both which forced employees to ask customers to donate at the till. We hated doing it. It is awkward for both the customer and the worker. I would get anxiety when donation drive time of year would come round, and I’d feel relief when the customer either just said no or yes, and didn’t yell at me for asking. The cashier REALLY does not care if you donate or not. And the cashier usually does not make your food, it’s usually someone else doing the cooking, and the cooks aren’t paying attention at all to whether you donated or not.
Same. I got lectured so many times by customers who insisted I was stupid for daring to ask them and acted like I had some sort of personal stake in the charity.
Then most of these same people would buy a ton of lottery tickets when I was in retail.
On the other hand, I have heard people ask that question, answered yes, and then checked my receipt later to find out that I just handed $0.57 to round out the cashier’s drawer.
Please don’t link to Reddit.
Sorry but this sub has a policy of crediting people rather than passing content off as their own. You can always just not click the link. Lifting content without crediting the op I got it from would be unethical
It’s already lifted from Twitter, what’s the point of crediting the person who lifted it without credit?
I don’t trust them to actually donate anyway. How would you ever find out? I suspect these are scams to hold the money and get interest off it even if they do ultimately donate it.
Not sure if this is 100% accurate, but I heard that how it works is they donate the money first, get the tax write-off and then try to hit people up at the checkouts to refund all the money after the fact. That way they get the tax break for donating the money without actually being out of pocket. I don’t know what happens if people donate more than the amount they spent, but I think I can take a reasonable guess.
Even assuming this isn’t a scam, it’s certainly not something they’re doing out of the goodness of their hearts - must be some combination of a) a tax write-off and b) an opportunity to claim credit for other people’s donations. (“Stop & Shop is proud to have donated $275,000 this quarter to help families in need”)
You forgot c) the donation is processed via the corporation’s own charity foundation, and skims some money off the top to pay for the salaries of the people “running” the foundation. i.e. the c-suite of the company, or their relatives.
I hate these donate screens because I have no idea where the donation actually goes and i don’t want to have to do a ton of research at the grocery checkout about whether its a good charity.
I have never seen a donation bin/screen/what have you that didn’t say what charity it was for.
If a business is collecting donations and then not giving them to the charities in question, that’s just fraud.
Yeah but just because they name the charity doesn’t mean its a good charity. Some charities just aren’t good ones to donate to and you’re basically just throwing money down a well when you do donate to them.
How bout the fact if they achieved their goals, they wouldn’t have a problem to have a charity for and thats a bigger concern to them. They’d rather not help people than not exist. They may as well just pretend they are the poor people their campaigning for. Or be technically homeless and donate to themselves while living in charity(company) owned residence
Nah the charities are usually legit. But the companies aren’t doing it out of the goodness of their heart, it’s a massive tax write off as well as free PR.
People that give money for those charities are giving those companies free tax write offs.
You donate $10 or whatever. The company can then claim that $10 as a write off via donation to that charity. Campaign as a whole (either regional or national) collects $1M USD. Corporate accountants write off donation. Tax liability reduced.
That’s not how tax write offs work. The only way to claim that money in a write-off would be for the business to also claim it as revenue. That would even out, with no tax savings. Businesses also don’t handle donations that way, they usually serve as a collection agent that just passes your donations on without being able to claim it towards their revenue or their tax write offs. The only person who can write-off their donation is the person who actually made it.
The reason businesses do it is for marketing. They get to put out a press release saying “They helped donate $10 million to puppies without borders.”
That’s not how tax write offs work
Jerry: So we’re gonna make the Post Office pay for my new stereo now?
Kramer: It’s a write-off for them.
Jerry: How is it a write-off?
Kramer: They just write it off.
Jerry: Write it off what?
Kramer: Jerry, all these big companies, they write off everything.
Jerry: You don’t even know what a write-off is.
Kramer: Do you?
Jerry: No, I don’t.
Kramer: But they do. And they’re the ones writing it off.
Puppies do not recognize your silly imaginary borders and will commit zoomies across any such lines.
I intended on writing this comment yesterday but jerboa timed out on me. It’s a common misconception and I understand how it gets spread, but I wish there was better knowledge and education of how taxes worked in general. Would make it easier for the average person to spot the ways companies do evade taxes, too.
No, that’s not how it works. In order to do so, they’d have to first claim the money received as income.
That said, there are scummy things that they do. At the least, it’s saying “we [bigcorp] donated $1,000,000 to charity” when in reality all that they did was collect it. In other situations, companies like Sobey’s doesn’t actually pass on food bank donations as cash, but rather have then as credit to buy products only from Sobey’s.
