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Comment by noisenotsignal | Hacker News Reader

You can’t deduct charitable donations unless you don’t take the standard deduction. Instead, you must itemize your deductions. In practice this means you take the standard deduction because most people don’t total more than the standard deduction when they itemize (you have to be decently rich to afford to donate that much!).

Last year you could deduct up to $300 in donations on top of the standard deduction, but I didn’t see it this year.

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> In practice this means you take the standard deduction because most people don’t total more than the standard deduction when they itemize (you have to be decently rich to afford to donate that much!).

Charitable donations aren’t the only itemizable deductions.

Ok, I’m sorry for not enumerating all possible itemized deductions when we’re talking about charity specifically.

However, charity is probably the most well-known deduction that you can control (in contrast to stuff like state taxes, which are more or less predetermined). And even among the deductions you control, those deductions require some spending. Can a non-rich person really spend enough to itemize beyond the standardized deduction? If you know how, please let me know because I’ve never gotten close to the standard by itemizing! Even when I’ve had large purchases to compute sales tax for I’m still far away.

Otherwise, it’s pretty clear that, generally speaking, charitable donations aren’t helpful for reducing one’s taxes. I’m sure people donate because they want to, but the tax benefits are not part of the calculus.

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