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If you\u2019re like many Americans, letters from your favorite charities may be appearing in your mailbox acknowledging your 2020 donations. But what happens if you haven\u2019t received such a letter \u2014 can you still claim a deduction for the gift on your 2020 income tax return? It depends.<\/p>\n
What is required<\/strong><\/p>\n To support a charitable deduction, you need to comply with IRS substantiation requirements. This generally includes obtaining a contemporaneous<\/em> written acknowledgment from the charity stating the amount of the donation, whether you received any goods or services in consideration for the donation and the value of any such goods or services.<\/p>\n \u201cContemporaneous\u201d means the earlier<\/em> of:<\/p>\n So if you made a donation in 2020 but haven\u2019t yet received substantiation from the charity, it\u2019s not too late \u2014 as long as you haven\u2019t filed your 2020 return. Contact the charity and request a written acknowledgment.<\/p>\n Keep in mind that, if you made a cash gift of under $250 with a check or credit card, generally a canceled check, bank statement or credit card statement is sufficient. However, if you received something in return for the donation, you generally must reduce your deduction by its value \u2014 and the charity is required to provide you a written acknowledgment as described earlier.<\/p>\n New deduction for non-itemizers<\/strong><\/p>\n In general, taxpayers who don\u2019t itemize their deductions (and instead claim the standard deduction) can\u2019t claim a charitable deduction. Under the CARES Act, individuals who don\u2019t itemize deductions can<\/em> claim a federal income tax write-off for up to $300 of cash contributions to IRS-approved charities for the 2020 tax year. The same $300 limit applies to both unmarried taxpayers and married joint-filing couples.<\/p>\n Even better, this tax break was extended to cover $300 of cash contributions made in 2021 under the Consolidated Appropriations Act. The new law doubles the deduction limit to $600 for married joint-filing couples for cash contributions made in 2021.<\/p>\n 2020 and 2021 deductions<\/strong><\/p>\n Additional substantiation requirements apply to some types of donations. We can help you determine whether you have sufficient substantiation for the donations you hope to deduct on your 2020 income tax return \u2014 and guide you on the substantiation you\u2019ll need for gifts you\u2019re planning this year to ensure you can enjoy the desired deductions on your 2021 return.<\/p>\n \u00a9 2021<\/em><\/p>\n <\/body> If you\u2019re like many Americans, letters from your favorite charities may be appearing in your mailbox acknowledging your 2020 donations. But what happens if you haven\u2019t received such a letter \u2014 can you still claim a deduction for the gift on your 2020 income tax return? It depends. What is required To support a charitable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6,10],"tags":[8,11,12],"class_list":["post-15295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-individual-tax","category-news","tag-articles","tag-news","tag-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfw.cpa\/news-and-guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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