On 6/13/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 6/12/06, daniwo59@aol.com daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
3 Are there any mails that we are required to send by law? Yes, Any donor who gives over $200 must receive written notification for IRS purposes. This includes multiple donations--for instance, if someone gives $20 a month over a period of a year, they will require such notification. That's a lot of donors to keep track of
Are you sure this isn't just a requirement in order for the donation to be tax deductible? Can you give a cite so we can look at this? I know there is a requirement that cash donations over $250, including over the course of a year, must be substantiated in order to be deductible, but I always thought that the burden was on the donor to provide correct contact information. It's certainly *possible*, for instance, for me to put $10 a week in cash into the church basket without the church knowing to give me a written receipt. It just wouldn't be fully deductible in that case.
See publication 1771 for more on this. Now I don't know if this was what you were talking about, but according to the publication:
"An organization which does not acknowledge a contribution incurs no penalty; but, without a written acknowledgement, the donor cannot claim the tax deduction."
The publication also says that "An organization can provide the acknowledgement electronically, such as by an e-mail addressed to the donor."
It also says "Separate contributions will not be aggregated. An example of this would be weekly offerings to a donor's church of less than $250, even though the donor's annual total contributions are $250 or more." I guess I was mistaken that such donations wouldn't be fully deductible.
Note that none of this applies to quid-pro-quo donations, which have a different set of rules. So if you're giving cafe-press T-shirts to donors, and these shirts don't meet the "token exception", then you have to play by different rules.
Obviously that whole publication should be read. It outlines the exact requirements of the acknowledgement letter, which I won't copy here.