If I’m in the checkout at a business, say McDonald’s or Walmart or Kroger or whatever, and they ask if I’d like to round up to donate to some charity, I usually say yes. But should I be doing this? I heard somewhere that I shouldn’t because they can claim that as a donation from them which contributes to them paying less taxes or something, I’m not sure if that’s 100% how it works but I figure that it benefits them somehow or why else would they do that?
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Don’t do it.
Some credit cards/bank services will round up your purchases for you and save whatever extra in a savings account. See if you can do that for a 1 year and see how much money you’ve been giving away.
Do you like being asked at every transaction to add more money?
If no, then don’t incentivize that behavior. Don’t reward them for behavior you don’t want to see everywhere.
The thing about the corporation paying less taxes is a myth. The extra contribution you make counts as revenue in their books, and that revenue is then offset as a donation, making no overall difference to their tax benefits.
That said, it does help them in other ways, mostly around marketing. They can then say they’ve made a massive amount of charitable contributions, when really it was their customers that did so.
As others have said, by making that donation at the checkout, you haven’t really made an informed decision about whether the charity is one you would donate to otherwise, so if that’s important to you you should stop doing so.
The way I look at it, if you are going to make a conscious decision to donate to charities you support, there’s no real reason to round up at the checkout. But if you aren’t really going to be donating otherwise and you’re not struggling financially, you may as well make that small contribution at the checkout.
They don’t get to count it as revenue or use it to offset anything. If you’re making a donation through them, it’s going to be listed on your receipt and YOU get to claim it on your taxes.
Nope, choose a charity or something else to donate to yourself.
Unless they ask if you want to round down, don’t accept the offer.
My wife and I used to always do those round up things and make donations at the register. One day we decided to pick a couple charities in which we believed and make a couple donations a year to them on our own. I also started to volunteer at a food bank.
There are a number of ineffective charities. I wouldn’t donate without vetting.
Edit: Okay so the scam could roughly be like this. Legitimate company funnels donations to a charity run by CEO’s spouse. Charity funnels 90% of funds to “overhead”, 10% goes to specially selected recipients.
Donations are more aligned with my beliefs when I can choose the charity.
And my country gives smol tax breaks for donations to charities. So I can get some cash back at tax time. I don’t get those at the check out.
That’s pretty much how it works. I don’t know if it’s really a should/shouldn’t conversation per se. Money is still getting donated to the needy, it’s just also kind of undercutting what the company should be doing in terms of taxes and stuff. And some people just can’t get themselves to make the time to donate directly.
That said, 100%, if you can get yourself to make the time to donate directly to a cause, that is absolutely undeniably better than letting the company do the roundup thing and you should totally do that instead.
I wouldn’t trust corporations.
Say you want to donate 10 dollars. How do you know they wont lie and pocket 5 dollars and only give the charity 5 dollars.
Just donate directly if you really want to donate. And research the charity before donating.
I rarely recognize the charities they sponsor, and I don’t exactly trust McDonalds and Walmart to have the same values as me when they select charities. So no, I don’t ever round up. I try to do my due diligence in researching, and I donate on my own.
Most charities from cooperations are pretty much them getting your money and “donating” and then making it a tax right off benefiting them and only do it because it makes people think there “good” and want to help when it’s just a scam for them to manipulate people and get more money.
Donate directly never through corporations. Always
