If, for example, you are at checking out at Home Depot and they ask you “would you like to round up your total to the nearest dollar to benefit x__________ charity” DONT do it. They are taking that money and donating it in their name and using that donation to be tax exempt.
If you feel so inclined, donate it personally and help hold these mega corporations accountable for what little taxes they do have to pay.
I worked at a fast food place that did this, and we had daily quotas we had to hit each day or we got in trouble. i got in trouble so often because I refused to do it that they lowered my quota to like a dollar because they didn't want to have to write me up. and then I still refused to do it lol
Jesus, can anything in capitalism ever be done in good faith?
(Rhetorical question; I know the answer is no.)
a walmart cashier lady chewed me out once "because you over here in a dayummm SUIT talmbout donating just a five spot (slang for $5)?!!!" she doesn't know i just wear a suit jacket because my office liked to save money on heat and my suit was 5 years old purchased in 2013 for $200 canadian which is $10 american
Additionally, these often go to charities owned by the company or closely related to them. These charities notoriously have awful ratings for actually getting money into the hands of people who need it and spend it mostly on administrative bloat (do nothing jobs as favors to people) and marketing materials for the company itself. So Home Depot gets to go support the local little league team. Great - except they get all the credit, not you, and they spend 5x as much on admin and banners and marketing than they actually give to the kids
sadly a lot of these companies also donate to legit charities, so a lot of people will just hit "donate" because they know the org is a good one and deserves the money but the opportunity cost of doing so is literally tax evasion
I only do it at my small local food co-op where they rotate through local organizations. In that case since I'm a member it's basically like "I'm" doing it anyway.
Explain to a brainlet how this works. I thought it was that you just don't pay taxes on money you donate, right? Like, it's just as if you never made that money, it doesn't affect the rest of your income.
Yeah, but if someone gives you $10, you have $110, then you get it tax deducted and you're back to $100.
Still not getting it. If I make $100 I pay ten percent, $10. If someone gives me $10, now I owe ten percent of that, which is one more dollar, total is $11. I give what they gave me to charity, that portion goes away and I'm back to the 100/10 I started with. My original income has not changed at all, and neither have the taxes on it.
I don't get how the charity money changes the original amount you made. You still have to pay taxes unless you make nothing at all.
If you owe $10 in taxes and I give you $10 that you use to pay for your taxes, you now only owe $1.
I'm not giving them $10 to pay their taxes, I'm giving them $10 to donate to charity. They don't have to pay taxes on that $10, sure, but they certainly can't use it to pay their bills.
The cost equation is the same, to reduce tax cost by $10 you have to increase charity cost by $10.right but the government takes $10 off their taxes anyway.
100 + 10 (donation) - 11 (taxes) + 10 (rebate) - 10 (donation spent) = $99
you're up $9 on the whole exchange
But everyone would have to know and do this for it to affect the corporation, correct?
Sounds a lot like the futility of voting.
I think the idea is to not get duped and pay a corporations taxes with your own money
I mean posting about it online and just kinda hoping everyone does it is a liberal mindset if we're expecting anything actually significant to happen. That's fine though, we are still living in capitalism and we gotta feel like we're doing something once in a while, even if a couple thousand chapos saying "no" at the checkout line is meaningless in the grand scheme.
Many times more liberal is saying "yes" at the checkout line and thinking it's your good deed of the day.
In short, I think you're both right.
This doesn't appear to be actually true. Apparently it's more about a positive correlation with sales and a "halo effect"
