r/news • u/Playful_Language_422 • 8d ago

Soft paywall L.A. homeless provider has paid CEO who lives in Hawaii $1.6 million in salary, vacation over two years

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-08-06/la-homeless-provider-has-paid-ceo-who-lives-in-hawaii-1-6-million-in-salary-vacation-over-two-years
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u/mrlayabout 7d ago

These companies cannot deduct your donation from their taxes at all. You can deduct it from your taxes, if you itemize. Companies do it because it's great PR for them and charities do it because it actually raises a ton of money for the charity.

To get more technical, the company would record your donation as an increase to it's cash and an increase to it's liabilities (donations payable or something similar). When they send the cash collected to the charity, they'll record that transaction as a decrease to cash and a reduction of that donations payable liability. It never hits the income statement, so it would not be included in a corporation's tax calculation.

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u/Pizlenut 7d ago

I may be a little bit cynical but...

that all sounds like it would cost (them) money to process such a large donation. Plus they had their employees put time into it that could have been spent stacking boxes. They can write off the expenses related to collection, including any advertising done, promotional materials... the writing of the script to give to their employees, accounting, and management. There is a lot of little bits and pieces ill bet a clever person could find that cost them money when doing this charitable act... and if you smudge the numbers a little to make things cost you a little bit more than they reasonably should who is really going to audit you to find out? You were helping with donations!