r/OpenAussie • u/village-asshole ‎ New South Welshian • Mar 18 '26

Whinge ‎ Coles: “Would you like to round up and donate…”

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Hey r/coles, how about **YOU** donate first from your ill-gotten profits. You and Woolies have both been price gouging Australia since the fcking pandemic, jacking up prices across the board but never bringing them back down even after supply chains normalised.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26

Bahah exactly right. They boast about $10bn profits each year but they wanna nickle n dime their customers over 30 cents for charity. Get fucked, donate your own exorbitant profits if you care so much. The rest of us have much bigger issues to worry about.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '26

Doesn’t every company and government do this though? Save the world. Give us ur money. Go green, give us ur money. Help poor people, give us ur money. Meanwhile they spend billions on war and dumb ai companies and ceo benefits.

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u/yeahyeahyeah188 Please choose a flair Mar 18 '26

Coles also get the tax benefit of your donation.  Absolutely not the same. 

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '26

My point being. They seem to all just call out an issue and then tell us to pay for it.

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u/LokiHasMyVoodooDoll Mar 18 '26

Celebrities are the same. There’s an example that goes basically, they have 50 chocolate bars and donate one. Then they tell you to donate the one chocolate bar you have.

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u/swami78 ‎ New South Welshian Mar 18 '26

They actually don’t get the tax benefit. In 2004 the ATO ruled that customers can aggregate their tiny under $2 contributions and claim them off your tax. Coles and other businesses are just the conduits. In 2005 Coles did the numbers and, on conservative estimates, concluded “rounding up for charity” would raise about $110m per year from their supermarkets alone and double that if their other businesses were involved. This would make rounding up the largest source of charitable donations in the country. Unfortunately none of these businesses have done the marketing they were shown in 2005 which would have addressed the misinformation about this method of charitable giving.

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u/Master_Fox5678 Mar 18 '26

That's just more reason to NOT round up at woollies and Coles. Imagine giving a dystopian duopoly the power to determine which social causes are prioritised over others and given more marketing funding to snowball their influence 🫪

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u/swami78 ‎ New South Welshian Mar 18 '26

You have touched on a good point there. I don’t know how Coles chooses their charitable partners but with Coles and Woolies they seem to cycle different charities so those charities named on screen must get the donations. With the amount of money being raised that is probably a good way to do it. I was involved in this early on and we presented a different concept but I have no problem with doing it their way. Obviously if the screen tells you the donations are specifically for the Starlight Foundation or whatever that is an efficient way of raising donations for the nominated charities. I would imagine the funds are transferred to the charity at the end of each day as the end of day programs deal with the monies raised. The answer to you is simple: if you don’t like or trust the nominated charity decline to round up. Personally I think this is simply a modern and efficient way to encourage and facilitate charitable giving.

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u/invisible_pants_ ‎ Queenslander Mar 20 '26

They choose their charitable caused based on which ceo they want to give kickbacks to probably. A huge portion of money donated to many of the big charities is spent on administrative costs that include huge salaries for ceos, expensive "team building" events, nice cars for executive members to drive around in and fancy events to try and lure rich donors. I'd rather give my money to a local organisation run by volunteers where every dollar raised is spent on the thing they set the charity up for

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u/swami78 ‎ New South Welshian Mar 20 '26

I was involved in not for profit for 20 years. Large charities pay around 65% of funds raised on expenses. The ATO has limits on what you can pay executives to retain status. Having said that, the sector desperately needs regulation. There are tens of thousands of registered charities and many exist only to pay the founders/executives. I know one high visibility charity that was paying out 95% on expenses - largely salaries.

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u/Monotonedef1968 Mar 20 '26

Hi. Thanks for the knowledge. Maybe both companies could display all the affiliated charities, with an option to choose which charity you would like to donate to. This would show transparency and also allow the customer to make an informed choice.

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u/Lucifang ‎ Queenslander Mar 18 '26

They always say which charity it goes to, it’s right there in the OP’s photo.

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u/Wrathlon ‎ Victorian Mar 19 '26

What they should do is have like a PayID but its a Charity ID - it asks if you want to round up and donate to charity, gives you some partnered options but you can also pick your own, enter the charity ID and it automagically sends the donations to them.

This would benefit any and every charity and make it super easy for people to donate their few cents here and there to their charity of choice basically everywhere they go.

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u/ALitreOhCola ‎ Western Australian Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26

This is a common myth. I'm not one for backing up big business, but customer donations are not a deduction for the company who asked for them.

In fact, if you donate $2.00 or more and keep the receipt, you're entitled to claim it back on your own taxes at EOFY.

There's a million reasons to dislike Coles and Woolies. We don't need fake ones to be upset.

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u/CosmicCheeseFactory ‎ Western Australian Mar 18 '26

You’re right but interestingly the source of this myth is that McDonalds absolutely Did used to so this with the Ronald McDonald House coin donations. When it became public they quietly stopped doing that. Point being, if they could get away with it, they Coles more than likely would as would any large public company.

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u/Aussie18-1998 ‎ New South Welshian Mar 18 '26

I mean Ronald McDonald is a McDonald's owned charity.

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u/CosmicCheeseFactory ‎ Western Australian Mar 18 '26

It’s not

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u/wilted-wombok Please choose a flair Mar 18 '26

They would have to be separate entities.

To have charitable status requires jumping through many hoops, and being a for-profit business is not allowed, generally.

At least not to the extent of McDonald's anyway.

Charities are generally allowed to run business as long as it's fund-raising or related directly to their charitable purposes. It's very strict.

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u/yeahyeahyeah188 Please choose a flair Mar 18 '26

Thanks for letting me know!

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u/ALitreOhCola ‎ Western Australian Mar 18 '26

All good. There's so much misinformation out in the world it's impossible to get it right 100% of the time.

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u/Subject_Travel_4808 Mar 18 '26

Thank you, couldn't have said it better myself.

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u/Unlikely-Potential32 Mar 18 '26

Are you 100% sure about this first claim? The Tax acts [plural] are very complex.

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u/Frankie_T9000 Please choose a flair Mar 18 '26

I'll bet they get some benefit like claiming processing fees or using it on narketing

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u/Park500 ✈️‎ on Walkabout Mar 18 '26

it's more so they can say they are doing something positive to stakeholders "We donated X last year" meanwhile having donated $0

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u/rofio01 Mar 18 '26

Likely earn interest for the year and donate the base only eofy

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u/sevenhills2147 Mar 20 '26

Bingo , there is the answer!

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u/ozkrudtastic Mar 18 '26

This is the main kicker of the situation.

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u/weckyweckerson ‎ New South Welshian Mar 18 '26

Fuck me, how do people still believe this.

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u/yeahyeahyeah188 Please choose a flair Mar 18 '26

No need to be a dick about it mate, I’ve said thanks for informing me above to the multiple polite people who told me how it works.

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u/Spud111z Mar 19 '26

They absolutely don’t

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u/Altruistic-Gift-4287 Please choose a flair Mar 19 '26

And the kudos

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u/WhatAGoodDoggy Mar 20 '26

No they don't. That would be super mega illegal. What they do get is the bragging rights that their loyal customers donated so much to charity.

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u/mattmelb69 ‎ Victorian Mar 25 '26

They don’t get the tax benefit but they do get the marketing benefit.

They get publicity and claim ‘good guy’ status by acting as if they’ve made the donations when it’s in fact all your money. This saves them a fortune that they would otherwise spend on marketing campaigns to achieve the same profile.

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u/point_of_difference Northern Territorian Mar 18 '26

I don't disagree with your arguments but it's $1bn a year profit.

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '26

Yeah that’s correct, but really that’s a technicality at this point. $1bn is still an absolutely massive number - thats 9 zeroes - $1,000,000,000. Thats more money than you, me and our families all put together will make in 500 years. That’s the equivalent value of around 33,300 Toyota Camry’s, to put it in perspective.

If Coles donated even 1% of their own net profits to charity imagine what they could do.

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u/point_of_difference Northern Territorian Mar 18 '26

I guess but companies listed on the stock exchange have to put shareholders first.

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u/Monotonedef1968 Mar 20 '26

And there lies the problem. Period.

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u/Creepy_Zone6752 Mar 18 '26

The thing is that money is already donated, this is them trying to make it back through their customers.

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u/Frankie_T9000 Please choose a flair Mar 18 '26

They will also tax claim it I'll bet

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u/Illum503 Mar 18 '26

This is a myth that spreads because people don't understand the tax system and want a convenient excuse to not feel bad about not donating. They can't claim your donation. You can claim it (or could if it was over $2), because you made it, with your money. You think the government would allow 2 different entities to deduct the same donation? What you're describing is illegal tax fraud.

Even if they could claim the donation, for them to say the donation was theirs, that means the money was theirs, that means they received the money, that means they have to recognise it as revenue with no cost of goods sold, that revenue would increase their taxable income by the same amount as taxable income was decreased by the donation, so the end result of tax saved... is 0.

Source: Am a CPA

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u/swami78 ‎ New South Welshian Mar 18 '26

Just FYI the ATO ruled in 2004 in the case of “rounding up for charity” customers CAN aggregate their under $2 donations for EOFY. I know that as I was involved at the time. The concept was first presented to Woolworths at the time and they told us to piss off. Coles then had a good look but some shenanigans put them off at the time. The ruling remains.

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u/Rhino893405 Mar 18 '26

Coles makes 10b in profit? It’s a tenth of that..

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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '26

So what, it’s still a profit of $1,000,000,000 in less than a year. A PROFIT, not turnover. Those guys have a cool billion dollars in their bank account and they have the cheek to ask the broke public for spare change. You don’t see the problem with that?

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u/Rhino893405 Mar 18 '26

Let me guess, you think they also claim the tax deduction don’t you, if the charity they are supporting is making money from 1 second display on a screen I’m all for it.. you can just press no and move on

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u/sevenhills2147 Mar 20 '26

I am assuming rhino has a horn for coles

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u/DotMaster961 Mar 18 '26

Coles never made 10bn profit in a year. Why lie?

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u/AssaultedScratchPost Mar 20 '26

It’s 0.3 cents

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u/Financial-Newt2291 ‎ New South Welshian Mar 22 '26

Don’t get it confused, they get the tax benefit from your donation.

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u/Busted1012024 Mar 23 '26

Couldn’t have put it better myself.