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Track Your Charitable Donations to Save You Money at Tax Time

Personal Finance Saving Taxes
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Your max tax refund is guaranteed.

To view the Donation Assistant by TaxAct infographic, click here.

Making charitable donations makes a difference to those in need and can save you money at tax time.

Donation Assistant by TaxAct helps track goods and money you donated to charitable organizations. Your donations can then be easily imported into TaxAct Deluxe next tax season to maximize your refund.

How to Add Charitable Donations

1. After opening the app, tap “Add Donation.”

2. Choose the type of donation:

  • Itemize – Choose this option to give values to individual items, such as clothing and household items. Donation Assistant contains more than 1,300 audit-backed, fair market values to help maximize your deduction.
  • Miscellaneous Bag – If you want to give one value to a bulk donation of many items, or want to itemize later, choose this category.
  • One-Time Cash Donation – This donation type is for cash gifts made once or a few times per year to a charitable organization.
  • Recurring Cash Donation – Select this for weekly, monthly or quarterly monetary donations.

Learn more about each category below.

3. Create a charity.

Enter an organization name and street address. If you’d like, you can and choose an icon and color for each charity. The app saves your charities so you don’t have to enter it if you donate to them again.

 

4. Optional:

Create a digital record of your donation by taking a photo of the item or a receipt with the app’s built-in camera. Then save it with your donation entry.

Choose type of donation in the TaxAct Donation Assistant App

[Click on image or here to view the Donation Assistant by TaxACT infographic]

Itemized Donations

Donation Assistant has audit-backed, fair market amounts for more than 1,300 items to make it easy to value the item you are donating.

Simply choose the category that best fits your item and the app will guide you.

The app provides two distinct values for each item. IRS guidelines state your donated item must be in “good” or “better” condition. Choose the condition of your item for donation and the app will assign the associated value.

You also have the option of entering your own fair market value for each item.

If you do, keep in mind the IRS defines fair market value as “the price at which property would change hands between a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither having to buy or sell, and both having reasonable knowledge of all the relevant facts.”

After you have assigned a value, you can create a digital record of your donation by taking a photo of the item or a receipt with the app’s built-in camera.

Miscellaneous Bag Donations

If you don’t have time to itemize your donations, use the Miscellaneous Bag category.

Miscellaneous Bag allows you to give your own value to the items donated. When using this category, it’s a good idea to take a photo of the donations and receipts.

One-Time Cash Donations

Maybe you donate money to a local youth program or a national charity once or twice per year. Use the One-Time Cash Donation category for this type of donation.

Enter the amount and a description of the donation, and a photo of the receipt.

Recurring Cash Donations

If you make regularly scheduled monetary donations, the app will help set up a recurring schedule for you. Simply designate the amount made each time and how often a donation is made.

As the donation dates occur, the app will ask you to verify the donations were made.

If you need to change the amount donated or miss a scheduled donation, simply access the charity and donation from the Donation Assistant Dashboard and make the appropriate edits.

You can edit one or more entries from your recurrence schedule.

Donation Assistant Dashboard

The Donation Assistant Dashboard is the initial screen you see any time you open the app.

You may also access it by tapping on the home button from the slide in menu at the upper right of the screen or by tapping the home icon in the lower right of the screen.

As you enter donations, they are added on the Donation Assistant Dashboard on the front of the app. The dashboard shows each charity and the total donated to each one for the year.

Tap on a charity to view individual donation events. From here, you can also view each donation and photos, and edit or delete the donation.

View individual donation events in  the TaxAct Donation Assistant App

[Click on image or here to view the Donation Assistant by TaxAct infographic]

Donation Report

From the slide-in menu in the upper right, you may access the Donation Report. It shows all items and monetary donations for the year.

In addition to reviewing the information on your phone, you can also have the report emailed to you if your device has an email account already set up.

The emailed version of the report is viewable via your web browser on your tablet, laptop, or desktop.

Import Donation Assistant information Into TaxAct Deluxe

At tax time, you’ll be able to import your Donation Assistant data into TaxAct Deluxe. All the donation information you’ve collected will help save you valuable time and money on your taxes.

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