As a salaryman, I wish I got to donate pre-tax amounts! I get some credits, but if your income is high enough, it doesn’t even cover the taxes already paid.
Tax-efficient to get employers to donate money to charities of the employee's choosing in their honor maybe? Probably some opportunity for a startup here.
But I can see some employers not being too happy being linked with some of the choices, or employees being unhappy some of their favorites aren't on the list.
"When you donate stock to charity, you’ll generally take a tax deduction for the full fair market value" [1].
[1] https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/giving-account/what-you-c...
For most people, the standard deduction is freaking huge now due to the changes under Trump - for married couples in 2024 it will be $29,200.
So you have to have deductions that equal almost $30k before they start to "matter". If your itemized deductions would be about $10k (mortgage interest, perhaps, SALT, etc) you would have to donate $20k before you would start to see some effect from the donations.
There are still some ways to do pre-tax donations even without that, but you may have to involve estate-planning trickery.
Their death could be no surprise and the accountants/lawyers on speed deal would be limitless.
Surely they had their books in order, unless they wanted to pay tax.
https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040sca (Control-F "Gifts to Charity")