Someone on HN or Reddit mentioned that grocery charities are actually a tactic to estimate the sign of the derivative of e the customer base's grocery-discretionary income, as a hint of when to raise prices.
Feels so dirty, like free health screenings for employees, when the real purpose is to built an insurance risk profile for a geographic area.
And there is concern that these checkout charities are replacing more traditional means of corporate giving, reducing net contributions.
Whether or not they make you feel ambushed, due diligence is worth hope before giving, as some companies (and the non-profits they give to) are more worthy than other.
[0] Such as walgreens. But there are some places, like Costco, that will match customer and employee giving.
[1] Petco
I was under the impression that a corporation can take a tax deduction for charitable donations. There's a line item for it on Form 1120 (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1120.pdf)
Since the income and the deduction directly offset each other, this is a zero sum maneuver.
South Park making fun of them for it in 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKsOwJ8AGWo
/edit:I'd rather be asked about a membership once at the cashier's than by every sales staff I talk to during my visit.
If you anticipate shopping there more than once, or for any large item (excluding sales), then a membership is worth it. The dividend is 10% so it pays for itself after $200.
So, to be fair, I don't recall being pushed, since it made sense to me, and they wouldn't push me now because I'm already a member.
Do you realize that REI is a co-op [1] and the membership will entitle you to cash back on your purchases and a vote for their board of directors? It's a one-time fee, and mine paid for itself the first year I had it. It's a stupid grocery store loyalty card.
TYPO DETECTED: I just realized I meant to say it's not a stupid grocery store loyalty card, it's way better for the customer.
FWIW the dividend is pretty nice. Combined with the sale I saved a pretty solid chunk of money on a nice cooler.
You got tested on this.
Prime account is just the replacement for their rewards program. For the month of... may? The old one who stopped and the prime one hadn't started. This made some customers mad.
Plus it's a lot easier if you're basically running off a script to do the eight hours of repetition.
Just like colleges and the healthcare industry.
Got to pay all those vp's of vp's of vp's.
By analogy, the main rocket on the space shuttle has two stages of fuel pumps...powered by rocket fuel. So you could say that's inefficient, why not run fuel straight from the tanks into the rocket. But it can't pump enough in to get enough thrust unless it uses some of its fuel so that it could burn even more fuel.
My personal charity gripe is the blood bank. They make it out like you're a hero, meanwhile they bill the patient thousands of dollars. They hide behind "but people with disease might donate if we paid them", well they pay people for plasma. And they have to test for HIV anyway (not only that, HIV isn't even a death sentence anymore). If they want my blood they can donate it to the patient or give me 50% of what they bill.
> NPR and ProPublica went in search of the nearly $500 million and found a string of poorly managed projects, questionable spending and dubious claims of success, according to a review of hundreds of pages of the charity's internal documents and emails, as well as interviews with a dozen current and former officials.
> The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people, but the number of permanent homes the charity has built is six.
By all means, donate to a deserving charity. The RC probably isn't one.
As to the Red Cross, It also feels pretty sketch.
https://www.npr.org/2014/12/04/368453320/red-cross-misstates...
The Red Cross is frequently accused of having excessive management costs and mismanaging funds; if you do a little research (a) they appear to have reasonable overhead (b) a lot of the accusations seem to come from competing charities with higher overheads.
https://www.npr.org/2014/12/04/368453320/red-cross-misstates...
Charity Navigator: https://www.redcross.org/about-us/our-work/international-ser... Haiti spending: https://www.redcross.org/about-us/our-work/international-ser...
They're a charity. You didn't stop donating to charity.
But in the email they asked if I wanted the money, or I could donate it.
Right now I could use the money, but now I feel just a little bad about it.
Though I do appreciate your well cultivated sense of suspicion and cynicism. Keep it up!
-- OR --
You file it as income to your sole proprietorship or llc; you "sponsor" something charitable as an expense.
Either way, the deduction and the income are at best 0 sum.
Though, if it's less than $600; they may not file a 1099 and you may "forget" to report it.
I'm a regular salaried employee, all my income is reported on a W2. Pre-Trump, if I donated $ to my favorite charity...it's deductible if I exceed standard deduction.
That is to say that on w2 income you will pay payroll tax and on 1099 you may pay self employment tax -- in addition to income tax. You then get to deduct the income tax only. So the presented case, to get paid a small sum as a contractor that either you or the company will donate to a charity; it's going to be a net 0 or net negative to take the income and then donate it 100% compared to letting the company donate it.
The relevant changes were to the standard deduction and the % cap (if you're donating >50% of your income). Technically, the standard deduction doesn't matter here at all, that's a choice, it would be a net negative for the filer to choose itemized over the standard if they don't exceed the standard.
The 2018 changes also effect the pass through rate, so there is a small possibility that if you took payment in your pte, you'd be taxed at 21% cap, your business didn't make enough to pay self employment tax, and then you donate the money from your normal earned income at the 22 or 24% rate.