Many people want to use part of their estate to help charities they believe in—leaving a legacy of helping out the less fortunate, nurturing the arts or supporting other important causes.
The failure of the bipartisan debt reduction committee to reach agreement means there are likely to be drastic cuts in federal spending that will result in many more Americans looking to the charitable sector to meet their needs.
If you make a donation worth $250 or more to an IRS-approved charity, you must
receive a qualified “contemporaneous written acknowledgement” from the charity to
claim a charitable deduction.
The signs of distress in the world of philanthropy are no more vividly illustrated than at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in Los Altos, Calif.
When Congress allowed the estate tax to expire at the end of 2009 it may not
have realized that it was setting up a social experiment that could test the values
of high-net-worth individuals.