{"id":6196,"date":"2016-12-30T21:08:37","date_gmt":"2016-12-30T21:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=6196"},"modified":"2017-01-13T21:11:07","modified_gmt":"2017-01-13T21:11:07","slug":"be-sure-charities-are-legitimate-before-taking-tax-deduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=6196","title":{"rendered":"Be Sure Charities are Legitimate Before Taking Tax Deduction"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_6190\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/gr-55668-1-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6190\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6190\" src=\"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/gr-55668-1-1.jpg\" alt=\"Many people wait until year\u2019s end to donate to charities, and sometimes find out the hard way that not all of them are legitimate. Photo: Casper1774\/iStockphoto\" width=\"600\" height=\"401\" srcset=\"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/gr-55668-1-1.jpg 600w, https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/gr-55668-1-1-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/gr-55668-1-1-405x271.jpg 405w, https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/gr-55668-1-1-60x40.jpg 60w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-6190\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Many people wait until year\u2019s end to donate to charities, and sometimes find out the hard way that not all of them are legitimate. Photo: Casper1774\/iStockphoto<\/p><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><em>by Mark Richardson<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><strong>DALLAS<\/strong> &#8211; There are more than 1.5 million charitable organizations in the United States, so it can be tough to figure out which ones to choose for your end-of-year tax-deductible donations.<\/p>\n<p>Attorney Beverly Salhanick has this advice: First, familiarize yourself with the group&#8217;s mission and find out exactly how it tackles the problem. Next, look online for information from other sources about the charity to see what others are saying about it.<\/p>\n<p>Salhanick said it&#8217;s helpful to check out the sites that grade the charities.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">\u201cThen you want to look at \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/Charitynavigator.org\" target=\"_blank\">Charitynavigator.org<\/a>\u2019 or at \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/Give.org\" target=\"_blank\">Give.org<\/a>.\u2019 Both of those rate the charities and act as watchdogs, to make sure that they\u2019re doing what they say they\u2019re going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Salhanick said the Better Business Bureau is another source of information, to see if the organization has any complaints lodged against it. She added that it\u2019s smart to check whether the group actually is considered a charity.<a href=\"http:\/\/www.charitynavigator.org%22%20target%3D%22parent%22%3Echaritynavigator.org%3C\/a%3E%20or%20at%20%3Ca%20href=%22http:\/\/www.give.org%22%20target=%22parent%22%3EGive.org%3C\/a%3E,%22%20she%20said.%20%22Both%20of%20those%20rate%20the%20charities%20and%20act%20as%20watchdogs%20to%20make%20sure%20that%20they\"><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You can go to the <\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.irs.gov\/\" target=\"parent\">Internal Revenue Service website<\/a> and see if it&#8217;s a 501(c)(3) organization,&#8221; she said, &#8220;or you can check at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guidestar.org\/\" target=\"parent\">Guidestar.org<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In one recent year, the average Texan who itemizes deductions reported giving about $6,000 to charity, according to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.urban.org\/research\/publication\/profiles-individual-charitable-contributions-state-2013\" target=\"parent\">National Center for Charitable Statistics<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Mark Richardson DALLAS &#8211; There are more than 1.5 million charitable organizations in the United States, so it can be tough to figure out which ones to choose for your end-of-year tax-deductible donations. Attorney Beverly Salhanick has this advice: First, familiarize yourself with the group&#8217;s mission and find out exactly how it tackles the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6197,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6196\/revisions\/6197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}