Okay the title is a bit exaggerated, but honestly not far off. This post is very mundane and a bit long, but thought it fits the community.
I'm visiting my home country and went shopping for pants, there were "30% off everything!" signs with a tiny text underneath that said "member discount" (don't have membership). Not a problem, did not notice and I don't care for such marketing tricks to get you into the store but okay.
Picked up couple of pants, went to the cashier and they asked me "do you have our membership?" - I answered no and expected the follow up question whether I'd like to join, but, to my positive surprise the cashier just happily responded "okay, not a problem!" and continued to bag my stuff.
I stood ready to pay and then the cashier said "now I just need your phone number and you can pay". Hold up. What. I did not expect that, I honestly had a burst of anger inside me (never gonna take it on a cashier, they are just doing their job). I asked nicely why do I need to give my phone number and I was told that to register me as a member so I can get the discount.
I declined and said I don't want to join and would like to just pay.
The entire interaction after questioning why they need my phone number was awkward, as if I had been the first person to decline, the weirdo, aluminum foil hat wearing hermit.
This was just one of many interactions in the recent years that make me feel as if I was a weirdo for not sharing all my info around. The worst is when everyone keeps telling me "its just an app, just download it and use that why do you make things complicated" or "just sign up you don't need to pay anything".
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"Would you like to donate money to us that we pretty pretty promise will go to some vague charity while we reap the tax benefits? No? Are you sure? Fine, we'll just ask you next time (regardless of your answer this time)."
What tax benefits? Sure they can deduct the donation, but that just cancels out the income from you giving them the money to donate. It's net zero for the company.
I hear the charity tax myth all the time and I don't understand why everyone just believes it.
Obviously, it's not possible for a store to claim a tax deduction for a customer's charity donation. But, the store can claim tax deductions for the cost of collecting the donated money on the charities behalf.
Costs would include: a percentage of the staff members salary for asking the customer to donate, equipment costs to modify the registers to process donations, a percentage of the credit card transaction fees, a percentage of the shop lease costs, etc etc.
Initially, it sounds ridiculous as the real costs of what I listed above would realistically land somewhere between zero and shit-all. But we can be sure that the businesses that ask their customers for charity donations have all the numbers geared heavily in their favor.
Except all of those things you listed would be business expenses which aren't taxable as they would be deducted from gross profits as part of the calculation for determining net profit (which is the taxable part of profit) and if they're also using that as a charitable contribution then they are deducting it twice which the IRS tends to frown upon. Or at least they would if they had any kind of worthwhile enforcement mechanism for dealing with corporations.
I would assume the tax agencies of countries outside the US similarly frown upon such double deductions, possibly even with effective enforcement.