Jan 17, 2019

Interesting Psak:

Someone asked Rav Chaim Kanievsky if the portion of his donations to Torah and chessed institutions that he later receives back in the form of tax credits is considered tzedaka as well when he give is or is only 65% of his donation considered tzedaka because he gets 35% back?

According to Kikar, Rav Chaim Kanievsky answered that he gets the mitzva of tezdaka for every penny/agora/pruta that he takes out of his pocket and gives to charity. The fact that he gets some back later does not take away at all from the tremendous mitzva he had done...




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2 comments:

  1. Something doesn't make sense to me...

    We don't give maaser on pre-tax dollars. i.e. You don't gain less taxes by giving charity - you had less income.

    If you earn $100,000 and after tax it's $70,000 - your Maaser is $7,000. If the next year you donated $7,000 to charity and you again earn $100,000 and would have been taxed the same $30,000 but now because your charity reduces your income and you have a "income" of $100,000-$7,000 so after tax it's $65,100 - You owe $6,510 for maaser.... So you don't just "Save on taxes" - you also "save on Maaser".

    In other words you are looking at it totally wrong.

    Giving money away doesn't save you money on taxes just as earning less doesn't save you money on taxes.

    Someone tell me where I am wrong.

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  2. R. Moshe Feinstein ruled that one need not take into account a refund one receives because of the charitable tax deduction. IOW, if you get back a credit from the IRS, you do not have to count that as income for maaser.

    What I find interesting is how the question here was asked -- not a shayloh about how to calculate maaser, but a shayloh about how much credit you have in shomayim.

    ReplyDelete