Hi. I'm interested in donating ~50% of my lifetime disposable income. For context, I'm a salaried professional making mid-6-figures. I've lately been thinking about this, and realized by accident that there are many nuances to my plan that I'm not very knowledgable on. Such as:
1. I had originally planned to donate most of it directly from my 401k savings, in order to minimize taxes. I just realized however, that the IRS only allows "direct giving" on IRAs, and has a 100k limit as well
2. I also realized recently that there is a ~20-50% cap on the tax deductions you can claim per year, for charitable giving. In isolation, this seemingly benefits amortizing my donations over many years.
3. On the flip side to the above, because of the recent SALT cap in the tax bill, I wouldn't be getting any tax benefits for the first $14,000 in donations that I make every year. In isolation, this seemingly benefits lumping together my donations into a handful of tax years
I would love to hear others' advice on the most tax efficient way to handle the above. But that is actually not the main reason for this post.
More generally speaking, I've come to realize that I may have other financial blind spots that haven't occurred to me yet. Are there any articles or discussions or forums that are focused on the financial-planning aspects of making 5-6 figure charitable contributions?
Welcome to the EA Forum! Kudos to you for your generosity! You’ve probably already joined Giving What We Can, but you may also be interested in Bolder Giving (giving high percentages, but not focused on effective giving).
Since you can deduct state taxes and interest on a mortgage, I would guess you are already exceeding the $14,000 standard deduction. So then I think it would be important to donate every year to make sure you are saving taxes on the money you make in the top bracket. Here is a post that might be helpful. There are also quite a few posts (e.g. this recent one) on investing with an EA mindset.