Charitable Contributions Are Tax Deductible

If you've made contributions to a charity in 2011, you should be aware that those contributions can be used as a tax deduction. When you want to deduct charitable contributions, you will need to use itemized deductions rather than taking the standard deduction. You should figure your taxes both ways to ensure that you choose the method that will give you the largest deduction. In order for a charitable contribution to be deductible, it needs to meet some basic criteria that the IRS has established. The charity must be a legitimate, registered charity. Often, if you make a contribution to a charitable organization, they can provide you with the proper tax information you'll need in order to use the contribution as tax deduction. Remember, you can also take a deduction for miles driven to a charity event, or money spent on tickets at the event. When itemizing your deductions, be sure to include all of the donations you've made.

My husband and I gave a lot of money to charity this year and so I am looking up charitable contributions on the Internet because we are going to be filing our taxes in a couple of weeks. This is going to be the first time that we're ever going to do our taxes on our own and so I would like to make sure that I am well informed about this. I am also looking up other information that concerns our taxes. I want to make sure that we are not audited and that I do everything right. We are going to be doing our taxes on our own this year because I would like to learn how to do them and also because we would like to save a little bit of money. My husband and I have been working really hard to save our money and we have been living on a budget so that we can contribute money to the organization that we belong to.