contributions? Gotta punish those pesky poor and disadvantaged people you know.

is opening up a donor-advised fund and " bunching" your contributions to it in alternate or every third years.In those years you'd surpass the standard deduction and itemize. In the other years you'd take the standard deduction.

I heard this too. But I'm not sure what it will take to make that work.

I ordered TurboTax in early December in order to get an early start with my return. When I saw that my normal donations were not influencing my balance due, I decided to experiment with a "test" donation of $22k. That amount did not change my liability.

I'm not sure how many folks donate over $20k every few years, but this experiment gives me little hope that this bunching strategy is going to actually help most taxpayers.

I am interested in following this thread and hearing about other member's experiences.

22k below the new standard deduction, so even if you add in a 22k charitable donation, it wouldn’t work for you. But the
OP is only 2k below, so it would work for her/him.

The figures that the OP listed are probably somewhat comparable to my situation.

I share the concerns about what this will do to charities, and to our respective bottom lines...

Of course it's not. I am still hearing charities in commercials talking about "tax deductible contributions" and sadly shake my head.

But then sure, you could waive the standard deduction and go ahead and itemize to deduct charity gifting, but then your taxes will actually go UP unless your total deductions are (significantly) higher than the standard deduction - and it's even more difficult for low/middle income to do that because things like local/state income and property/sales tax deductions are capped at $10,000 (total).

So the new standard of $12,000 does nothing for me. The new limits on property and local taxes are killers.

You and millions of others. Particularly in high-property tax states. That is partly why states like NJ flipped 4 GOP Congressional seats. There is now only 1 Republican Congressman left in the entire state of NJ out of 12 total, and only 7 left out of 53 total seats in California! NY flipped 3 seats and there are now only 5 GOP seats out of 27 total seats in the state.

I’m in much the same situation as you, and am also continuing to support an array of social justice, anti-poverty, and environmental organizations, and donating stuff to Goodwill. But I fear that many will be dissuaded by the large standard deduction.

The way I look at it, I’m getting even more of a benefit to support my bleeding heart habit. It just wouldn’t feel right to give that up. And if we don’t have to itemize, that saves me a few hours of administrivia in the bargain!

I live in a state where local taxes far exceed the $10,000
SALT cap.

I am probably paying more.

Between the higher deduction and lower brackets it balanced out.

in prior revisions of the of the tax code they (Congress) because of this very concern. Also, they were very concerned about eliminating the deductibility of mortgage interest and thus, left this in the tax code too.

However, greed overcame these formerly historic issues, and the republicans wanted to award their donors (they said that they wanted to award their donors, not I), and thus, two very major disincentives were included in the 2017 tax cut and jobs bill (they wanted to pay for the tax cuts so they eliminated a lot of former deductions).

So now Home ownership will suffer. We will be seeing the negative impact of this before too long. I think in some circles they've already seen a negative impact on the housing market. I don't know about donations, but I suspect some impact will occur, although I think the ultra rich will continue to donate solely for the deductions (at inflated values of the donated items of course).

In short, the tax code has become the playground of the rich and the middle class has been totally written out of it/the tax code.

It’s just the two of us, so it works in our favor. Anyone with several kids would be hit hard by that though

I'm on a fixed income and pretty much fixed expenses. Nothing has changed since last year so I can make an apples to apples, oranges to oranges comparison... Turbo tax just came in the mail so I'm set..
Up? down? sideways?... wait, it's the government so I'm prolly getting screwed...
m

We are married filing jointly and previously would get up to about $15,000 in itemized deductions. Now with the standard deduction at $24,000 that is quite a bit more than we had been deducting, and I assume the credit for our three kids are still in there, so it's basically telling me I get a 100% refund on all the money I paid in through my job, so I would end up paying $0 taxes.

Doesn't sound right, so it will be interesting when I actually get my W2 and run it through some tax software. I would LOVE to get that full refund, don't get me wrong, but it seems like something is off if we would end up paying $0 in federal taxes.

However, we still need to find out if daughter, who finally got a real job, (even though it's only commission), made enough this year to be able to file on her own; if she does that, we will only claim one grand-child instead of both (we are legal guardians of the older one) so she can get the EIC and the tax credit.

She thinks she made $4700, which, according to the new law, that means we can't claim her, even though we've taken over about $11K of her family expenses just so they can function within what he used to get working under the table for the family business. There's a IRS tax penalty monster just waiting to spring on him and his family, so for now, I'm advising her to file married but filing separately, just to protect her wages and returns.

Limit used to be $5600 before she'd have to file on her own - and if we also covered over that amount of her living expenses and she maintained a legal residence at our home, we could continue to claim her as a dependent; but this, it's dropped to $4000 before she could no longer be considered a dependent, no matter if she maintained a legal residence at our home or not.

So I figure she's going to have to file and we'll end up owing the Feds around $500 instead of breaking even. That's fine, I already planned to drop her out this year after she got her job, and was going to re-calculate what we will claim by middle of March. I just don't want to lend this administration any tax money over the year.

At least I was smart enough to change up my tax exemptions in back in March with the plan to just break even - and that means I'll get the around amount I'm going to have to pay the Feds from State. So, I'll really break even, just have to file State taxes before the Federal taxes.

Haele

I try to live my life doing for others whether or not I get anything in return...except the feeling that maybe I'm helping.

I give to groups that I care about and I wish I had more money to donate.

Under the old structure every dollar you donated cost you less than a dollar - due to the tax incentives. That allowed you to donate more than you can under the new system where it costs you the full dollar to donate a dollar.

(Assuming you are in the same boat as me - where this changed you from itemizing to not)