Charitable Donations, Taxation, and Automation

Web Payments Working Group,

Hello. I am preparing a brief, informal proposal which I intend to send to the IRS. I would like to see if there is interest, here, in discussing some payments technology topics towards improving the proposal.
The goals of the proposal include exploring how technological innovations can: (1) provide convenience to those who donate, (2) stimulate donations to charitable and political organizations, and (3) provide opportunities for policymakers to further incentivize donations to charitable and political organizations in more granular ways in the future.
When end-users donate to charities or political organizations using Web technology:

  1.  Their banks or other payment providers could authenticate these transactions as being to charitable or political organizations and they could ping or notify the IRS (including via use of periodic batch transactions).
     *   If banks or payment providers could authenticate charitable donations and send privacy-preserving data to the IRS, end-users could have their donations automatically tabulated, accumulated, calculated, and prepared for them for purposes of tax deductions.
     *   This data could be automatically populated for and presented to end-users on their online tax forms.
     *   The IRS could provide means and API for accounting and tax-preparation firms to access this data on behalf of end-users.
     *   End-users could opt out of these features with their banks or payment providers.
Thank you. I hope that these topics are of some interest to you. I would like to invite any brainstorming, comments, ideas, feedback, information, or discussion towards improving the proposal which intends to explore the above points.

Best regards,
Adam Sobieski

Received on Monday, 24 October 2022 11:26:50 UTC