1079 – Good for business and life: Tom talks Charitable Giving

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

Overview
Tom Antion explains how charitable giving can benefit both the causes you support and your taxes—but only if you understand the rules before donating. He emphasizes doing research and consulting a tax advisor to avoid losing deductions.
Key Points
• Itemization Required: Individuals must itemize deductions to claim charitable contributions. Standard deductions won’t qualify.
• Business Structure Matters: Rules differ depending on whether you’re an individual, sole proprietor, S-Corp, C-Corp, or partnership.
• Qualified Organizations Only: Deductible donations must go to qualifying entities such as:
o 501(c)(3) nonprofits
o Government entities (for public purposes)
o Educational institutions, churches, some veterans and scientific organizations
• No Deductions For:
o Political donations or PACs
o Most GoFundMe campaigns
o Donated time or volunteer labor
Types of Donations & Limits
• Books & Personal Property:
o Donations over $5,000 generally require a professional appraisal.
o Without an appraisal, deductions are capped at $5,000 per year.
• Vehicles:
o You can only deduct the amount the charity actually sells the vehicle for, not its estimated value.
• Real Estate, Jewelry, Artwork, Stock:
o Usually require appraisals to determine fair market value.
• Inventory & Equipment:
o Can be deductible depending on entity type and usage.
Income Limits
• Deductions are often limited to a percentage of Adjusted Gross Income (AGI).
• For C-corps, charitable deductions are generally capped at 10% of taxable income.
Charitable vs. Business Deductions
• If you receive advertising or promotion in return (e.g., sponsoring a scholarship promoted through a business), it’s typically a business expense, not a charitable deduction.
• Travel and out-of-pocket expenses for charitable work may still be deductible as business expenses, even though your time is not.
Advanced Giving
• Large donors may use foundations and advanced monetary strategies, but those are beyond the scope of this episode.
Tom’s Philosophy
• Be charitable—but smart.
• Avoid large charities with heavy administrative overhead.
• Whenever possible, give directly to organizations where money reaches the end cause quickly and efficiently.
Bottom Line
Charitable giving can be a powerful way to do good and reduce taxes—but only if you understand valuation rules, limits, entity types, and documentation requirements. Research first, donate wisely, and always loop in a tax professional for significant gifts.

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Episode 1079 – Charitable Giving
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.
[00:00:24] Hey everybody. It's Tom here with episode 1079 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about charitable giving and what you can give and what kind of tax deductions you can get and all that stuff. Hope you didn't miss episode 1078. That was vehicle leasing also has a tax connection to it. But you should always for both of these, check with your financial advisors before you make any major moves. All right. Pick up a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Version 3.0 is the latest. And check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com. And my school at IMTCVA.org, certified to operate by SCHEV.
[00:01:08] Okay, I got thinking about this because I've been cleaning out my. I have one, two, three, four, about five different libraries in this retreat center of mine. And so I started cleaning out the all the magazines that I just throw away that I've been saving for years. And, and then starting to donate some of the books because we need to renovate this whole place and the, the books, I found out I could donate to the local library. Awesome. And I'm thinking, oh man, I could, you know, get rid of probably 4000 books and get a massive tax deduction this year. Well, I'm glad I started researching before I went too far because I found out that what the method is for libraries or for this, this type of donation. And I'm going to get into a bunch of different types as we go here, but the maximum is $5,000.
[00:02:09] Or you have to have an appraisal of your book collection. And I'm thinking, oh man, I don't want to pay an appraiser just to go down to get a little bit of a deduction, all right. And haul these heavy books all around and all this stuff. So so I slowed down on that. And even though we packed up what appears now to be two years worth of books, I'm only going to take a year's worth down this year and save the rest till next year to get another 5000 donations. So. So the point here is, is before you do anything, if you think you have things of value that you want to donate not only to help the organization, but you know you want to get a deduction for it. Sure. Surely you should do that. I'm all for benevolence, but if you can get a tax deduction too, yay! Go for it. So The appraisal would have had me find a book expert and look at my stuff. Are they scientific or are they collectible books? Are they business and marketing books and what's the market value for them and all this stuff. So so I didn't want anything to do with that. So I just kept it well below 5000 and I'll save some for next time. But always check with your tax advisor or do a lot of research. No matter what you think you want to give to what organization, because it does matter what kind of organization it is and who you are and what business entity you are.
[00:03:46] So I'll just run through some of the business entities that could be you. And the first one is not a business entity at all. It's just you as an individual. But to get any kind of tax deductions for a donation, you must itemize your your taxes at the end of the year. You can't do it if you just take the standard deductions, Then you have sole proprietor. So if you have a business but you know you're not a formal S Corp or C Corp or partnership, then that has different rules. If you're an S Corp that has different rules, if it's a C corp, it's different rules. If it's a partnership, it has different rules, say so. You have to look into that and see okay, for the way I'm going to donate these things, then what business entity am I donating them under. And uh, to to get a tax deduction it must be a qualifying organization. So my particular one given to a library is I'm donating to a government entity. But in parentheses they have next to it for public purposes. So these books will be shown or you know, I don't know exactly what they're going to do with them. And sometimes that makes a difference too. Are they going to sell them in their bookstore, or are they just going to put them in their regular books to lend out, you know? So that makes a difference to any 501c3 is okay to to donate to educational institutions, churches or religious institutions, some veterans organizations, some scientific organizations.
[00:05:36] Those are all qualifying organizations to use a tax write off. But make sure you get a receipt from the organization. And I'm going to tell you about specific types of donations that require appraisals or fair market value determinations and things like that. Now, one thing you can't donate to to get a deduction you can certainly donate to, but you can't get a deduction. Deduction is political. Any Gofund me things that aren't set up under 501c3 political PACs, those kinds of things. No, you don't get a tax deduction for them. And then there's limits on how much you can donate. And a lot of times it's a percentage of your what they call AGI adjusted gross income. And in C corporations it's 10% of your taxable income. Again I'm just giving you general stuff. Like I said your tax advisor, if you're doing this on a large scale, should be involved to make sure you do everything properly because you don't want to get the deduction disavowed if you get audited or something. All right. So what kind of things can you do? You can do equipment. You can do inventory. Now if it's a vehicle like you hear this on the radio all the time. Cars for kids. Well, here's the deal with that. You might say. Well, I got a $8,000 collectible car and let's say cars for kids auctions it off to get the money. Well, whatever the auction price went for is the only amount that you can deduct.
[00:07:15] If you said it's worth 8000, but the auction it auctioned for $1,850. That's how much you can take off is $850. And now with real estate, you have to have an actual appraisal to see how much you can take. Take off. Again, I'm giving you the generalities for your specific situation or for your specific piece of real estate or vehicle for your business entity and who you're donating to. It all matters here. Now, I'm not trying to discourage you because it can be a great tax deduction if you have stuff that you want to donate and and it's to the right places and the right things, great. You can also donate stock artwork. Imagine jewelry probably needs an appraisal for that too. Now what you can't donate and take a tax deduction is your time. So let's say I donated a speech to some organization in California, and I paid my own expenses to get there. Well, I can deduct the expenses from either business expense. See? Some of these things, you might think they're charitable thing, but actually you can still get a benefit by making it a business deduction. So let's say I donated to a car dealer. I said, okay, I'll give you a scholarship to give away through your dealership as a big promotion for the people that buy a certain kind of car. But you promote my school as giving the scholarship? Well, that's not a charitable thing at all, even though it's being given to somebody who wins the scholarship, or if they bought a car, they're put into a drawing for the scholarship, something like that.
[00:09:07] But the fact that I got an advertisement out of it makes it clear cleanly out of the charitable arena and puts it into the advertising or business arena. And another thing is you have to watch for is like, even though the scholarship might be worth $19,000, you got to figure out how much does it really cost to deliver that to a student? You know, so sometimes that's all you can deduct. Again, you got you got to get your your tax advisor to figure this out or do all the I suggest you do all the research and give it to them to confirm so they don't have to do, you know, 100 or $200 an hour, do basic research for you, but you can't. Your time volunteered is not tax deductible. So that's a big overview of this. It can be very valuable to you if you have stuff that can donate to get you some tax deductions. Or like I said, if it converts into advertisement a business deduction, I don't care either way. But you can do a lot of good in the world by contributing all these things. And one thing I left off the list. You can do money. Okay. And in fact, some of the more advanced charitable giving techniques involve money and foundations and things like that, which is far too much for this episode. But if you have a big income and you've started a foundation, then you have other ways that you can get tax deductions.
[00:10:42] So so there you go. So charitable giving can, you know, I leant or leaned heavily towards the tax deductibility of this for your benefit because that's my job is to help you be successful in business. But I don't want to downplay the fact that you're doing a lot of good with the things. If you give to the proper charities that are actually giving. You know, one thing I am skeptical of is when the the CEO of the charity makes $12 million a year and like $2 out of every hundred make it to actually helping people. And the rest of it is administrative crap. I stay away from that tremendously. I'd rather give directly to the closest entity to the final use of the money for good. That's my philosophy on things. So, for instance, when I, I don't think I got a tax deduction for this, but I gave I raised, I raised $24,000 to um to for Bechon Rescue and the money went directly to the two people running the rescue thing so that the dogs could get their vet bills paid and all that stuff. See, so I didn't want to give to some national organization that's got 58 layers of bureaucracy that eats up all the money before it gets to the dogs. Put it that way. All right, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Check out my mentor program. Greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and my school IMTCVA.org and I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.