Magnify Your Church Giving

By Bill Henning

In last week’s article, we mentioned tax advantaged charitable giving accounts.  When you sell stocks or bonds that have appreciated in value, you will pay taxes on the gain to the IRS.  If you gift those stocks or bonds directly to the church, you will pay no taxes to the government on the amount of the gain.  You can do this at any time with a call to the church office which will provide you with the church’s account at Vanguard for acceptance of your gift.

If you own stocks or bonds, your broker probably offers tax advantaged charitable giving accounts. These accounts (such as DAF- donor assigned funds) allow you to transfer stock or bonds directly, without paying taxes, into an account that you can direct to qualified charities (like your favorite public radio station or church.)  What is great about these accounts is that you can set up monthly recurring gifts to charities from the giving account, all tax free. Even though you may be donating this money over many years, you can take the charitable gift tax deduction for the entire amount in the year you set up the fund. By bundling several years of charitable gifts into one year, you can increase your itemized deductions in that same year and reduce taxes.    Let the office know if you want to talk about tax advantaged giving accounts.