• iAmTheTot@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    To preempt the inevitable: no, companies do not take your donations and then use them as a tax write off to somehow profit. That’s a myth. That’s not how taxes work. Those donations are yours and you can claim them on your taxes. Yes, really.

    • salton@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s not the tax write off. It’s that the companies like to white wash their image though these types of charities at the counter. They could just donate a portion of their profits instead. I don’t need my charitable donations to be impulse purchases when I’m trying to grab some milk.

      • Changetheview@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        They’ll also use the customer donations in their own marketing materials with carefully chosen wording.

        “We put $X in the hands of X charity!” Sounds cute, until you realize why they don’t say they “donated $X” instead. It’s because it’s often not their money or donation.

      • jaybone@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah if they really fucking cared, the machine would ask “how much of our profit in this sale should we donate to charity.”

        Then you don’t pay anything extra, and they can take the tax write off. (And lose the profit.)

        Lol of course they will never do this.

      • iAmTheTot@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Yes, they get good publicity typically. Charities also get a butt load of money they would not have otherwise got.