The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Offering Envelopes/Records

For those of you who are interested, here's a summary of the tax reporting requirements for churches and their members, I'll try and keep it simple as I can:

For tax purposes, substantiation of the deduction rests with the donor. Under the Internal Revenue Code, in order for any (single) contribution of $250 or more to be tax deductible, written acknowledgement (i.e. a receipt) must be received from the charity by the time the donor files his tax return. The receipt is not required to be filed with the tax return, it must be maintained in the donor's files and supplied upon audit if requested by the IRS agent. For contributions of less than $250, a cancelled check is sufficient documentation upon audit.

Please note that the $250 threshold is for single (not cumulative) gifts of $250 or more. Therefore, if you are in the practice of giving $100 a week to your church, you are not required to obtain a receipt from the church because none of the contributions exceeded $250. However, let's say you were away for a few weeks and upon your return you wrote a check for $300 to the church. In order to deduct that $300 contribution you are required to obtain a receipt from the church. By getting a year end statement listing all of your annual giving you would be in compliance with the receipt requirement if one or more of your weekly gifts is $250 or more.

Unlike other charities, churches have no reporting obligations to the IRS. They are not required to file any type of tax or information return with the IRS to report their receipts and expenses. (They do of course have payroll reporting requirements for compensation paid to the staff). Under current law, a church is granted automatic tax exemption, it does not have to file an application for tax exemption like other charities.

So, in summary, a church maintains records of its members' giving for their convenience and its own internal reasons, not due to any IRS requirement.