Following is a great summary put together by DKB's Mike Tullio. Mike is a Senior Manager in DKB's personal tax and wealth planning practice. If you have questions contact Mike at mtullio@teamdkb.com.
On January 22, 2010 the US Government enacted a special provision allowing taxpayers making cash contributions to charitable organizations providing earthquake relief in Haiti to deduct those contributions on their 2009 tax returns as long as the contributions are made on or after January 12, 2010 and before March 1, 2010. Taxpayers should be aware that they have the option to deduct these contributions on their 2009 or 2010 tax returns, but not both. To qualify for this provision, taxpayers must
1. be able to itemize their deductions.
2. make the contribution specifically for the relief of victims in areas affected by the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, and
3. make sure their contributions go to qualified charities (contributions to foreign organizations generally are not deductible).
Additionally, federal law requires that taxpayers keep a record of any deductible donations made. For donations made by text message, a telephone bill providing the name of the donee organization, the date of the contribution and the amount will satisfy the recordkeeping requirement.
Finally, this recent provision is not reflected in the tax organizer that you recently received. Therefore, you may want to save this information with your 2009 tax organizer as a reminder when collecting your data for the preparation of your 2009 tax returns.
The IRS provides some additional helpful guidance on this new tax break at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLPzcJcKKEE
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