Echo Publishing Inc., as well as many of the other important nonprofits in Oceana County, are extremely thankful for the community’s end-of-year donations to help meet their nonprofit’s financial needs going into the new year. We wish to share the following 2025 charitable giving information and thank Todd A. Comstock, CPA of Todd A. Comstock, Inc., for allowing us to reprint a portion of his end-of-year client letter.
“You can reduce your 2025 taxable income by making charitable donations (assuming your itemized deductions exceed your standard deduction). If you are close to the itemized deduction point, consider bunching future 2026 donations into 2025 to take advantage of a larger itemized deduction.
Note: In 2026, standard deduction filers will get an above-the-line charitable contribution deduction of $1,000 (or $2,000 for Married Filing Jointly), so it makes sense to bunch charitable contributions into the 2025 tax year to take advantage of itemized deductions in 2025 and still benefit from cash contributions made in 2026 with the standard deduction.
If you don’t have a charity or charities that you are comfortable making large donations to, you can contribute to a donor-advised fund (also known as charitable gift funds or philanthropic funds) instead. This is a public charity or community foundation that uses the assets to establish a separate fund to receive grant requests from charities seeking distributions from the advised fund. Donors can suggest (but not dictate) which grant requests should be honored. You claim the charitable tax deduction in the year you contribute to the donor-advised fund, but retain the ability to recommend which charities will benefit for several years.
Another tax-advantage way to support your charitable causes is to donate appreciated assets that were held for over a year. If you give such assets to a public charity, you can deduct the donated asset’s fair market value and avoid the tax you would have paid had you sold the asset and donated the cash to the charity. Charitable gifts of appreciated property to a private nonoperating foundation are generally only deductible to the extent of your basis in the asset. But qualified appreciated stock (generally, publicly-traded stock) donated to a private nonoperating foundation can qualify for a deduction equal to its fair market value.
If you are age 70 and a half or older, consider a direct transfer from your IRA to a qualified charity [known as a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD)]. While you can’t claim a charitable donation for the amount transferred to the charity, the QCD does count toward your Required Minimum Distribution (RMD). If you don’t itemize, that’s clearly better than taking a fully taxable RMD and then donating the amount to charity with no corresponding deduction. Even if you itemize and would be able to deduct the full amount transferred to the charity, the QCD does not increase your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), while an RMD would. Keeping your AGI low can decrease the amount of your taxable Social Security benefits and minimize the phaseout of other favorable tax provisions based on your AGI.”
Oceana County nonprofits appreciate this community’s generosity in whatever form and for whatever amount they receive. For any questions related to charitable giving, please seek the counsel of a certified tax professional.
