What to know about gifting stock to a charity.

There are many alternative ways to donate other than money.  One I want to discuss today is the gift of stocks.  If you have been holding some stocks for a good while they have probably increased in value with substantial appreciation.  In that case there are two major benefits to donating this stock.  First, you get a charitable deduction for the gift of the stock.  Second, the charity does not pay tax on the sale of the stock so you bypass the capital gain.  This could result in tax savings to you of 23% or more due to your gifting the stock rather than selling the stock and gifting the cash.  You will need to file a Gift Tax return, but you can assign the value of the gift to your lifetime gift and estate tax exemption (currently over 11 million dollars), so you pay no gift tax.