Do you remember that stock you bought in that brokerage account back in the 80s? Do you know how much capital gains tax you’re going to pay on it when you finally sell it? What if instead of paying tax on it, you got a tax deduction on it and allocated more of your social capital to charities than to the government?
Welcome to the second in our series of charitable gifting strategies.
Highly appreciated assets are a double-edged sword. It’s great that they grew in value, but sometimes they subject us to higher taxes. For our charitably minded clients, they will sometimes donate some of these assets to charity, thus taking what was going to be capital gains tax and turning it into an ordinary income tax deduction. The mechanics of this can be as simple as sending the assets to a donor advised fund, or as complex as working it into a charitable trust strategy. But this strategy can work for stock positions, commodities, business ownership, or even agricultural equipment.
If the asset was a stock, a client can choose to replenish their portfolio with the stock by using some of the money that they did not send to the government in the form of ordinary income tax. As you might imagine, this makes their charitable contributions go further than if they had simply written a check. And we love helping our clients make a charitable impact.