Monday, January 22, 2007

Early info on Charitable IRA Rollovers

The National Committee on Planned Giving started a voluntary survey last October to track the results of the tax provision allowing tax-free transfers from IRAs to charities in 2006 and 2007. They have 1,468 respondents so far, and their report is found here. Some highlights:
• 9% of the gifts were at the maximum $100,000.
• The average gift was $20,365.
• Although nearly 3/4 of donors were motivated by their philanthropic desires, nearly 20% said that they did not want their minimum IRA distribution.
• 1.8% wanted to make a gift in excess of 50% of their AGI.
• Public universities apparently were the big winners, according to this sample, reaping 33.5% of the rollovers, with private universities coming in second at 19.2%. (The report does not provide a dollar breakdown.)
The report is dated January 18, 2007, and though most rollovers were likely for the 2006 tax year, the data is not broken out that way. Total value of the donations covered by the survey came to $30 million. I suspect that this popular tax provision will be very costly to extend beyond 2007.

1 comment:

JLM said...

Yes, it probably would be costly to extend. But that's because charitable deductions are phased out for upper-income taxpayers.

In the good old days, when anybody could deduct charitable giving equal to 30% or even 50% of AGI, most donations from IRAs would have been a simple,routine matter.