The following op-ed was published at Newswise and subsequently excerpted by The Street and republished across its national syndication network, appearing in outlets such as the Miami Herald, Charlotte Observer, Idaho Statesman and Sacramento Bee.
By Samuel Handwerger
In 2026, a small but meaningful tax break comes back to life — and with it, a paperwork habit most Americans haven’t needed in nearly a decade. Congress has restored an above‑the‑line charitable deduction for the roughly 90 percent of taxpayers who take the standard deduction. Single filers will be able to deduct up to $1,000 in cash gifts to qualifying charities; married couples filing jointly can deduct up to $2,000. It’s a modest incentive, but for the first time since 2017, non‑itemizers will once again see their generosity reflected on their tax return.
The return of the deduction is good news. The return of the paperwork is the part people aren’t ready for.
A nation that kept giving anyway
When the 2017 tax law nearly doubled the standard deduction, it quietly removed the charitable write‑off for most Americans. Not by eliminating it, but by making it irrelevant. Once only about one household in ten still itemized, the other ninety percent received no tax benefit for their giving whatsoever. The check to the food bank, the envelope in the collection plate, the year‑end gift to the alma mater — all still went out the door. They just stopped showing up on the tax return.
And here is the heartening part: people kept giving anyway. The charitable deduction is a dial, not a switch. It nudges how much people give, but for most, it never determined whether they gave at all. Americans went right on being generous with no receipt, no acknowledgment, no reward from the IRS.
But that generosity came with a side effect. The habit of keeping charitable receipts — the humble discipline of saving the paperwork—quietly went dormant. For eight years, most people had no reason to track their giving beyond their own records.
In 2026, that habit has to wake up.
The deduction is back — and so are the rules
The new above‑the‑line deduction lives under the same Internal Revenue Code §170 as every charitable deduction before it. That means the substantiation requirements are unchanged. Being a non‑itemizer earns you exactly zero relief on documentation. Different line on the tax form; identical rules in the law.
Those rules come in two tiers:
- Any cash gift, no matter how small, requires a bank record — a canceled check, a credit card statement — or a written note from the charity showing its name, the date, and the amount.
- Any gift of $250 or more requires a contemporaneous written acknowledgment from the charity. “Contemporaneous” means you must have it by the time you file your return. And it must state whether the charity gave you anything in return — a dinner, a tote bag, a gala seat — and if so, what it was worth. If the only thing you received was gratitude (or, for a house of worship, an intangible religious benefit), the letter must say that explicitly.
That last sentence — the “goods and services” statement — is where good, honest, generous people can lose their deductions. Not because they lied. Not because the charity is illegitimate. But because the charity’s form letter forgot this one line.
And the Tax Court has shown it is willing to strike down thousands of dollars of real giving over that omission.
The Durdens’ missing sentence
David and Veronica Durden learned this the hard way. In 2007, they gave $25,171 to their church, most of it in checks of $250 or more — the ordinary, faithful generosity of people who tithe. They kept every canceled check. They held a letter from the church thanking them and listing every gift. Everything they claimed was true.
The IRS disallowed more than $22,000 of it.
Not because the couple lied. Not because the church was anything less than legitimate. They lost the deduction because the thank‑you letter never included the required statement of whether the church had provided goods or services in return. When the auditor flagged it, the church issued a corrected letter — and the Tax Court threw it out. It wasn’t contemporaneous. It arrived after the filing deadline, and the law does not accept late homework.
In Durden v. Commissioner (2012), more than twenty‑two thousand dollars of real charity vanished from the tax return over a sentence that cost the church nothing to write and everything to omit.
The twist: it’s your job to check their work
Here is the part most people don’t realize: the church was not penalized for the faulty letter.
The Durdens were.
The law places the burden of a conforming receipt on the donor — on the person who gave the money, not the organization that received it. Which leads to a counterintuitive piece of civic advice: you have to check that the charity did its job. When the acknowledgment from the youth ministry or the animal rescue or the volunteer fire company lands in your mailbox, don’t just file it — read it. Does it list the amount? Does it include the goods‑and‑services sentence? If it doesn’t, it is your deduction on the line, not theirs. And the right move is to ask for a corrected letter before you file.
The whole story, in a breath
More Americans will have a reason to give in 2026 than at any time in nearly a decade — and most last kept a charitable receipt when they still itemized, back in 2017. The deduction is back. The generosity never left. All that’s missing is the muscle memory: give, then get the letter, then read the letter.
The Durdens did two of the three. It cost them $22,000.
Welcome back to the charitable deduction. Watch the receipt.
Samuel Handwerger is a senior lecturer in the accounting and information assurance department at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. He serves as faculty advisor to UMD’s Financial Wellness Center, plus UMD-affiliated nonprofits Justice for Fraud Victims and TerpTax. The latter provides free tax preparation services according to VITA/TCE guidelines for low- to mid-income individuals in the University of Maryland, College Park community.
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