Question

Do charitable cash donations really require so many pages in the "for the file" PDF ?

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
October 14, 2020
1 reply
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When you go through the interview to add a charity and a single cash donation, each one creates a large page when you save your return "for the file" with all worksheets and statements.

Is that much detail (and paper) needed for the special case of a one time only cash donation to a charity?

It would be nice to save trees if it isn't required by the IRS. 😉

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SteamTrain

Employee

It is unfortunate, but I suspect it easier and more consistent with the software programing to only have one Charity sheet to connect to, that has all the possible donation situations on it instead of creating 5 or 10 different charity sheet types for different situations.

Certainly, since it is a PDF file, at the time of actually printing hard copies, one can still pick and choose all the other sheet types to print out and not bother with the charity sheets. Then make sure the PDF itself is stored off computer (USB flash drive or other) so that you can review it later at any time if you need the charity details...or if your main computer crashes. Then, what I do is I keep/print a simple spreadsheet printout of all the charities I donated to for the year so that I have a short-list copy in a more tabular form.

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____________*Answers are correct to the best of my knowledge when posted, but should not be considered to be legal or official tax advice.*