Charitable donation deadline for 2024 tax credit may be extended

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Did you miss the conventional Dec. 31 deadline to make a charitable donation for the 2024 tax yr? Effectively, chances are you’ll be in luck, courtesy of the postal strike.

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On Dec. 30, the federal authorities introduced that it intends to amend the Income Tax Act to increase the deadline till Feb. 28, 2025, for making donations eligible for tax help within the 2024 tax yr. The federal government defined that the extension is supposed to “mitigate the impacts of the four-week Canada Submit mail stoppage,” since many charities depend on mass mailing campaigns every December, and donor response to these solicitations could have been considerably impacted because of the postal strike.

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“Many Canadians donate within the final eight weeks of the yr with an estimated 40 per cent of all donations coming in in the course of the vacation season,” stated Bruce MacDonald, president and chief govt of Think about Canada in a December 2024 press launch. “A big proportion of donors nonetheless donate by mail, and these donations usually are not being delivered in the course of the labour dispute. The postal strike additionally signifies that many organizations weren’t in a position to ship donation appeals by way of unsolicited mail this yr. There’s little doubt that the strike has a big impression on donations, with organizations already reporting important losses.”

To mitigate delays attributable to the postal disruption Think about Canada, together with non-profit coalition Cooperation Canada and the Well being Charities Coalition of Canada Inc., referred to as on the federal government to increase the deadline for eligible charitable donations into the brand new yr, in order that donors can obtain tax receipts for the 2024 fiscal yr even when donations are acquired and processed in early 2025. This was adopted by a Dec. 24 letter from Ontario Premier Doug Ford, in his capability as chair of the Council of the Federation on behalf of Canada’s premiers, to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asking the federal authorities to increase the deadline for claiming charitable donations on tax returns by way of to the top of February.

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As a reminder, while you make a charitable donation, you get a donation receipt that means that you can declare each federal and provincial non-refundable tax credit while you file your return. On the federal facet, you get a credit score of 15 per cent for the primary $200 of annual charitable donations. The credit score charge jumps to 29 per cent for cumulative donations above $200 (or 33 per cent in case you have revenue topic to the highest 33-per-cent federal charge, which was revenue of greater than $246,752 in 2024). Parallel provincial credit work equally, offering most Canadians with a minimal mixed federal/provincial tax credit score value no less than 40 per cent for donations above $200 yearly.

Permitting donors till Feb. 28 to make a donation and declare it on the 2024 return may also allow some late tax planning alternatives for many who are charitably inclined.

Let’s say you’re desperate to get a head begin in your 2024 tax return preparation, and begin making ready a draft of your 2024 return in January or February 2025 (some 2024 tax preparation software program packages have already been launched.) You understand that you simply owe a couple of hundred {dollars} of tax resulting from some funding revenue you earned and capital beneficial properties you triggered throughout 2024. You log on, make a 2025 donation to your favorite charity, producing an instantaneous digital tax receipt that you may instantly enter into your tax preparation software program bundle. And presto, bingo: You may have eradicated any tax owing.

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This can be a uncommon type of retroactive tax planning, just like making an RRSP contribution for the prior yr within the first sixty days of the present one.

The concept of extending the donation deadline by as much as 60 days will not be a brand new one. Actually, in October 2012 Peter Braid, who served because the Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Kitchener-Waterloo from 2008-2015, tabled a Personal Member’s Invoice (PMB), Invoice C-458, that proposed to increase the deadline for charitable donations to the top of February to coincide with the deadline for RRSP contributions.

He received the concept from a submission made to the standing committee on finance in February 2012 by Ottawa charity attorneys Arthur Drache, a former tax columnist for the Monetary Submit, and Adam Aptowitzer, who’s at present a companion and the nationwide chief of charitable and not-for-profit regulation at KPMG Legislation LLP.

Braid stated on the time that our present tax deadline of Dec. 31 “falls in the course of the busy vacation season, when Canadians usually are not often targeted on strategic monetary planning. As well as, many households have monetary constraints right now, and are unable to maximise their donations so as to present a higher charitable tax credit score.”

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Whereas the 2012 personal member’s invoice by no means grew to become regulation, Braid is happy with the present extension, and hopes that it’s going to turn out to be a part of the Tax Act for future years as nicely. “Shifting ahead, I’d encourage this authorities, or a future authorities, to completely examine the impacts of constructing this alteration everlasting … creating two seasons of giving — one which leverages the benevolence of donors in the course of the vacation season, and (a) second (one) that mixes the goodwill of donor motivation with strategic tax deductions when Canadians are extra targeted on maximizing their revenue tax refunds,” stated Braid in an e mail this week.

Aptowitzer agrees: “Extending the deadline … is a good suggestion, impartial of the explanations for it on this case, and given the overall decline in charitable giving, one would hope it’ll turn out to be a everlasting characteristic of our system.”

In its press launch, the federal government stated that it’s going to introduce laws effecting these modifications as soon as Parliament returns within the new yr. However given the precarious authorities state of affairs, ought to we be apprehensive about this changing into regulation in time for tax submitting?

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This query was raised by Stephen Hsia, a charities lawyer with Miller Thomson LLP in Vancouver, in an e-blast to purchasers advising them in regards to the donation deadline extension. He steered that, given the uncertainty, it might be most secure to make donations by Dec. 31, which is just too late for anybody studying this column.

However, even when there’s a non-confidence vote that brings down the federal government earlier than enabling laws is handed, I can’t envision a state of affairs through which any new authorities that’s shaped doesn’t absolutely help this charitable provision, retroactively.

Jamie Golombek, FCPA, FCA, CFP, CLU, TEP, is the managing director, Tax & Property Planning with CIBC Personal Wealth in Toronto. Jamie.Golombek@cibc.com.

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