Why don't you help by lowering the prices and being more reasonable? How do I even now you're actually using the money I donate for people's bills? That's a crazy donation request.
Come on now, be reasonable. Lowering the prices would mean they can't buy their 5th mansion. Just stop being selfish and give them a little more money.
If the store is representing the extra charge as a donation to a specific charity, generally, the customer can deduct that.
If it's far more vague, like, "Give $10 to help poor kids in Africa" the ultimate destination for the funds could be the company's own ledgers, which it would then use for its own charitable activities and collect the tax deduction, as long as they "help poor kids in Africa."
And some stores are just lying. CVS, for instance, was sued as part of a class action suit when, after the company pledges $10 million to the American Diabetes Association, then collected money from customers to fund that pledge.
Just FYI this is a sort of scam. The company donates the money on your behalf and they get the tax write-off for your donation while also appearing philanthropic for PR purposes. that's why they do it.
EDIT: US companies cannot do this in the US you can claim up to $300 on taxes. This is legit in the US.
@zombuey I've heard that a lot, but it is apparently not true unless the company claims your donation as a profit and then writes it off, which negates any tax benefit. I think it's more just a PR thing to make you feel good about that company while using your own money.
I think it’s more just a PR thing to make you feel good about that company while using your own money.
Yep, even without any direct financial benefit there is certainly a reason to engage in such behavior. The store gets you to associate it with the charity campaign and they'll make hay over the amount of donations they helped collect and their partnership with the charity. Drives for employee donations can also be used in a similar manner.
Furthermore, there is no contractual agreement on how or when they donate that money. So for example those companies might and likely will hold that money in trust to the non-profit. That way the company can use money as a hedge on taxes in future fiscal periods if they had an excess.
And redirecting you attention on to the "offsets" scam too.
Ever wonder why climate change is such a problem if 1.5 pence per liter petroleum burnt can undo the damage?
Spoiler: it can't. You can't sequester CO² for that cheap, and CO² isn't the only issue. "Offsets" are not certified by any trustworthy third party, and companies intentionally don't pry too much, so they can say "Oh sorry, didn't know" if anyone investigates and discovers they did squat-all.
Or just...donate the perfectly good food they constantly throw out into the cadged dumpsters designed to keep homeless people out... Litteraly would cost them nothing...
I hate when they pull this shit at drive through fast food. “Would you like to round up to donate to our charity?”
Who knows what the person taking my order thinks about this charity, and what they might do to someone’s food who says no.
Edit: The fact that merely implying a fast food worker wouldn’t be a complete perfect human being gets so many downvotes says a whole lot about this community.
To be fair, I bet these companies strike deals with the charitable organizations to in turn raise visibility of those charities among the company's customers.
People that give money for those charities are giving those companies free tax write offs.
You donate $10 or whatever. The company can then claim that $10 as a write off via donation to that charity. Campaign as a whole (either regional or national) collects $1M USD. Corporate accountants write off donation. Tax liability reduced.
That's not how tax write offs work. The only way to claim that money in a write-off would be for the business to also claim it as revenue. That would even out, with no tax savings. Businesses also don't handle donations that way, they usually serve as a collection agent that just passes your donations on without being able to claim it towards their revenue or their tax write offs. The only person who can write-off their donation is the person who actually made it.
The reason businesses do it is for marketing. They get to put out a press release saying "They helped donate $10 million to puppies without borders."
No, that's not how it works. In order to do so, they'd have to first claim the money received as income.
That said, there are scummy things that they do. At the least, it's saying "we [bigcorp] donated $1,000,000 to charity" when in reality all that they did was collect it. In other situations, companies like Sobey's doesn't actually pass on food bank donations as cash, but rather have then as credit to buy products only from Sobey's.
Yeah, this really bothers me. Because in reality, that company that you give money to at checkout is just going to bundle that all up and it's a donation in their name, used as a tax write-off. You as the shopper might feel nice and warm and fuzzy, but you're just giving a multimillion or billion dollar company a tax break. Just donate as yourself. If you want to help XYZ cause, do it on your own. My two cents.
I don’t trust them to actually donate anyway. How would you ever find out? I suspect these are scams to hold the money and get interest off it even if they do ultimately donate it.
Even assuming this isn't a scam, it's certainly not something they're doing out of the goodness of their hearts - must be some combination of a) a tax write-off and b) an opportunity to claim credit for other people's donations. ("Stop & Shop is proud to have donated $275,000 this quarter to help families in need")
You forgot c) the donation is processed via the corporation's own charity foundation, and skims some money off the top to pay for the salaries of the people "running" the foundation. i.e. the c-suite of the company, or their relatives.
Not sure if this is 100% accurate, but I heard that how it works is they donate the money first, get the tax write-off and then try to hit people up at the checkouts to refund all the money after the fact. That way they get the tax break for donating the money without actually being out of pocket. I don't know what happens if people donate more than the amount they spent, but I think I can take a reasonable guess.
“according to a lawsuit filed by a New Yorker, this money is allegedly being used to repay a $10 million commitment that the pharmacy chain has already made to the ADA, unbeknownst to customers. The suit accuses CVS of engaging in fraud and violating consumer protection laws in all 50 states. In essence, it argues, CVS is guilt-tripping customers in the checkout line to reimburse its own charitable donations.”
This is a lie that I had hoped to leave behind on Reddit but lo and behold it's so pervasive that it transcends social circles.
Repeat after me: that is not how taxes work.
They do not get any monetary benefit from your donations, save for arguably good publicity. They do not claim your donations in their taxes. They do not get extra write offs on their taxes.
Those donations are yours and you could claim them on your taxes, if you were so inclined.
This. The icing on the cake is that this tax write-off affects the amount of tax dollars available for public assistance in the first place. If you want to help the poor, consider volunteering your time or donating to a legitimate charity.
How bout the fact if they achieved their goals, they wouldn't have a problem to have a charity for and thats a bigger concern to them. They'd rather not help people than not exist. They may as well just pretend they are the poor people their campaigning for. Or be technically homeless and donate to themselves while living in charity(company) owned residence
Nah the charities are usually legit. But the companies aren't doing it out of the goodness of their heart, it's a massive tax write off as well as free PR.
I hate these donate screens because I have no idea where the donation actually goes and i don't want to have to do a ton of research at the grocery checkout about whether its a good charity.
Yeah but just because they name the charity doesn't mean its a good charity. Some charities just aren't good ones to donate to and you're basically just throwing money down a well when you do donate to them.
Sorry but this sub has a policy of crediting people rather than passing content off as their own. You can always just not click the link. Lifting content without crediting the op I got it from would be unethical
There is a Mastercard ad running during Apple TV+'s MLB Friday's that really goads me.
It's an ad about how "we are powerful indivudually" but can accomplish "anything together". This includes using your Mastercard where they'll donate a SINGLE CENT per purchase (up to $5m, gotta cap it!) to "fight" cancer. And this commercial... yeah, it stuck with me thus did it's job, but as the ad wraps up, with music swelling, all of these people come from nowhere to surround/hug an apparent cancer survivor (wearing the appropriate cancer survivor sweatshirt).
Gross. Just gross. Clearly it's for some tax write off, and technically there's nothing for you to do or spend, other than what you were already going to purchase.
But still, Mastercard could have just donated $5m outright. Or donated the amount of money they spent on that damned commercial, which was probably in excess of $5m given it's high quality production values!