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why don't you round up for charity
The thing is that they are. When you round up, that money becomes theirs. At the end of the donation period, they will donate all of your money and claim it as their own donations! They might even get a tax deduction and probably pay some number of employees who "manage" the charity out of the funds.
Yeah, corpo bad and this is lenmy, but I'll leave this here:
https://ronaldmcdonaldhouse.org/ https://rmhcsc.org/camp/
It's a charity that helps families with kids who have cancer or other terminal illnesses. They helped my family when I was younger when my sibling was "sick"
My brother had hard financial times when his daughter was born with some weird genetic issues. She needed heart surgery and stomach surgery and frankly wasn’t expected to survive. She’s fine now and the sweetest little thing but without Ronald McDonald house paying for and providing for this she wouldn’t be here.
They even took care of her brother who was visiting mommy and his sister during all this. They gave them Easter baskets and did everything they could to make the experience as normal as possible for the kids. They had zero reason to do this other than they fucking felt like it.
Now hold on... I pretty much never go to McD's so I have no idea, but are they really doing the "do you want us to round up" shit for Ronald McDonald House? Their own charity?
Wow, talk about scams within scams.
It's great that the charity helped you, but it doesn't change the fact that the "let us round your order up for charity" thing is a massive scam to get customers to subsidize their tax deductible charity donations
The business cannot use a round up charity donation for a tax deduction. They act as a holding agent. It's not counted toward their income nor does the donation affect their income tax. You as the customer donating are the only one eligible to claim it for tax deduction, though it's usually way too low to be worth the effort.
A reasonable criticism is that they will often on the PR side spin it as money they have raised, not always emphasizing how much customers are responsible for rather than them.
Yeah, I just read about that a few mins ago after posting this.
It seems when they have like the jars at the register where you can put the money in yourself, that's treated differently.
They shouldn't, but it would not surprise me if many especially smaller businesses have claimed customer cash donations as their own. Not sure how charitable the government would be with them if it was noticed, though.
woah, are you suggesting the world is maybe more complex than false dichotomous narratives where the 'little guy' is always good and the 'evil big power' is always bad?
sounds like you should get the ban hammer for such heretical suggestions. let alone providing pragmatic examples of positive outcomes from supposedly sinister charity acts.
Charity is only necessary because corporations like McDonald's exploit the working class. They pay us wages that are barely (or not) sufficient to keep us alive, then pocket the rest. All the billions the corporation makes is billions created by and stolen from the working class. Under a more equitable system based on mutual aid and in which the workers control the means of production, and own the fruits of their labor, charity as we know it would become unnecessary.
You don't reach MacDonald's worth by being the one who rounds up for charity.
Same thing I think every time I skip that option. The insanity of that request irks me to my core.
But it's just there to play psychological games on your mind making you think McDonald's is a good company lol.
They're trying to train us that impetus is on the common man to do something instead of them.
I love it when companies ask me to donate so they can get credit for it.
They can't. You get to claim the deduction with your receipt, they just offer funds transfer.
Standard deduction pretty much cancels it all out
That's a disputed subject... but they do indeed get the "social" credit for it, even if they don't get tax credits.
Whatever charities those cash register donations are going to, how can I sign up to make myself the recipient of all those cash register donations? This is kind of a serious question because at the end of the day, someone somewhere established that transfer of funds and I want to know how to get at the receiving end of that.
Start a charity, make yourself a paid member, lobby the chain to add you to the till options–with marketing research on how its good for their brand based on a demographic.
Look at Mr. Bigshot over here with with their positive networth.
How about you stop contributing to their wealth
I have not had their food since 2024.
Last time i was in a McDonald's, i had a Flintstones toy in my happy meal
I have not had their food since 2021 and that was the first time since 2008 for me.
Get boycottmogged, mcdonaldcel.
I'd also like a world where we don't need to survive off charity. Redistribute the stolen wealth and provide for everyone.
I haven't read the book personally (only seen the guy talk about it), but this book is all about that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winners_Take_All%3A_The_Elite_Charade_of_Changing_the_World
These people have shaped the world in a way that makes people believe that we need philanthropy, and that we rely on their "kind-heartedness", when in reality it's just shit that we should be doing through taxes (that these people don't pay).
I guess the book came from a speech he did, quoted in the wiki:
The Aspen Consensus, in a nutshell, is this: the winners of our age must be challenged to do more good. But never, ever tell them to do less harm.
The Aspen Consensus holds that capitalism's rough edges must be sanded and its surplus fruit shared, but the underlying system must never be questioned.
The Aspen Consensus says, "Give back," which is of course a compassionate and noble thing. But, amid the $20 million second homes and $4,000 parkas of Aspen, it is gauche to observe that giving back is also a Band-Aid that winners stick onto the system that has privileged them, in the conscious or subconscious hope that it will forestall major surgery to that system – surgery that might threaten their privileges.
The Aspen Consensus, I believe, tries to market the idea of generosity as a substitute for the idea of justice."[4]
FYI it's really a donation to McDonald's, they take your donation and claim it for their own deductions on their own taxes. I think donating to charity is a great hing everyone should do even of they can only afford a few cents, but doing it through a storefront like that allows the store to claim your donation as their own.
Less than 20% of Americans should be donating to charity. Half are living paycheck to paycheck and another 30% on top of that do not have enough money saved for retirement. If the rich paid their fair share of taxes, we wouldn’t even need charities.
Im poor too but i can afford a dollar of charity every once in a while, even if it's letting a friend sleep on the couch.
Yes taxes are completely fucked up and the oligarchs are running the country into the ground here in the US, but it doesn't change the fundamental human benefit of being charitable where you can.
That's why, imo, directly help the people who need it.
For example, our local area has a thing called "Real Change," and the money goes directly to the people who need it. I read it online, so I just give them cash instead.
If you know someone that needs $10 (or whatever you can afford) here and there to survive, give it to them right out. I'd much rather see communities helping people directly than the CEO money grabbing charities get the money. Also, fuck goodwill.
If they did that it is illegal, the customers can retain receipt and claim as charitable deduction, the business cannot as they are just a middle man funds collector.
Surely the revenue the report from your donation counteracts the loss they get from their donation to charity?
Unless there is some accounting magic I am missing?
It lowers their tax burden though. Which is the whole point
I'm not convinced it does, corporation tax is charged on gross profit, usually if a corporation makes a charitable donation this reduces their profit and therefore their tax liability (but not more than the cost of the donation)
If you round up 20c then the cooperation makes 20c revenue and loses 20c when they donate leaving their profit unaffected and therefore their cooperation tax is unaffected.
There might be some financial magic I am missing but nothing I have seen in this thread explains exactly how this is could be advantageous tax wise.
Yeah I'm no expert either, but I do think there is some kind of accounting shit (are they loopholes if it's intentional?) that they do.
I think there's something around "pass-through" entities that they use to lower their tax burden... But again, I know very little about this stuff.
Apparently though, with donations made at the cash register (e.g. round your order up), the corporation is just collecting the donation on behalf of the charity and can't use that to lower their tax burden. So that might just be pure PR.
The little jars at the register are treated differently though I think.
They don't get a deduction. Only the customer donating can claim the deduction with their receipt. McDonalds ( or others ) are just transferring funds on behalf of you
At the moment where I live there is a "round up for companies" thing I shit you not.
I wonder how many people donate because they just don't read the whole thing...
Corporations have this hilarious way of delegating the onus to the customer. "It is EVERYONES responsibility to recycle" - makes items out of non-recycleables. "If you can't afford to tip, you can't afford to eat out." -lobbies to keep minimum wages low.
"Here's a tip: Pay your fucking employees."
Because when you round up for charity, McDonald’s claims that donation themselves when they file taxes, lowering the tax they have to pay at your expense. You are paying their taxes for them.
This is why all the big companies do charity stuff like this.
That's not how donations work. You get a receipt for your donation and you get to claim it. McDonald's does not.
Thet get to say they raised money for charity but they don't get to claim it on their taxes.
It's just a low-effort way for them to virtue signal.
That's not how tax deductions for charitable donations work, and McDonald's can't claim them either. What they do get is PR for running the thing, and like it or not, it does get people to donate who otherwise wouldn't.
That being said, I would welcome people to do their own donations and get the tax exemptions for it, whatever gets them there.
We can hate McDonald's for a lot of other reasons.
You're not worth what's in your bank account. You're a human being and your worth comes from you and how you interact with others. Not having money doesn't mean being worthless. Elmo Musk, that dude is worthless and he has all the money on earth.