Here’s a last minute reminder about Arizona’s tax credit opportunities. You get to give money to some of your favorite causes and organizations, then get it all back—100 percent of it—at tax time if you owe enough in state income tax. The three tax credits I strongly recommend are for public schools, charitable organizations that help the working poor and foster-care organizations.
The time is drawing nigh. Most giving has to be done by Dec. 31 to qualify for this year’s tax credits (though there’s an exception with the public school giving). Since most organizations take credit cards online, there’s still time—a few days—to make your donations. You can give $200 per person, $400 for a couple, to each of the three and get it all back at tax time if your total Arizona income tax bill is more than the amount you give. That’s as much as $1,200 you can give to worthy organizations and get it back later.
Today I’ll look a the public school tax credit. I’ll post about the other two tomorrow.
Here are the rules about public school tax credits. You can give your money—$200 for an individual, $400 for a couple—to one school or split it up over a number of schools. Both district and charter schools qualify, and most of them make it easy by putting links to the information on their home web pages. The hitch is that the money has to go to extracurricular or character education programs. I don’t like that restriction, but that’s the way the law was written. Still, lots of important education and recreation happens in schools outside the classroom—sports, music, art, science, field trips, clubs. Especially in schools with lots of children from low income families, the donations can be the difference between the kids participating or being left out.
My recommendation is, if you haven’t already picked out a school or schools for your tax credit dollars, go with a school with low income children since they always come out on the short end when it comes to giving. When family incomes are low, parents pay little or no state income tax, so they can’t take advantage of the credit. Even if they pay some income taxes, they’re living from day to day and week to week financially, which makes it difficult to give money now even if they know they’ll get it back later. It’s another of those rich-get-richer, poor-get-poorer situations. Schools in well-off communities get lots of money, and schools in lower income communities get very little.
TUSD’s tax credit page links to a page with a list of schools that received the lowest dollars-per-student donations in 2014. According to the page, the 25 listed schools received between $11.41 and $25.67 per student, while the average TUSD school received $55.71. The disparities between high and low income schools are similar pretty much everywhere.
You can use your donation to pay for a students’ fees if you want, for your own child or someone else’s. This is another of those rules that’s most beneficial to well-off parents who can pay school fees with tax credits while lower income parents often can’t, but it also allows some parents of modest means to get a break on school fees. Here’s an explanation of how it works at TUSD.
One final wrinkle. You can give the public school tax credit for this year as late as April 15, 2016. Don’t wait! Do it now! But for those people who can’t afford to part with the money for a longer period of time before they get it back, they can send it when they file their tax returns.
This article appears in Dec 24-30, 2015.
David,
Thank you for spreading the word, and thank you to all the generous folks who donate to schools who’s population is not always able to donate.
Happy New Year!
I find the stipulations on the use of the money enraging. I was never aware where my money was going until I had kids. Over here in white flight ville, it’s all wink’wink: it should be called the middle class parent tax credit instead. The cash is segregated by child and credited towards paid school trips. Our teachers are still buying crayons and pencils out of pocket in TVSD, while the school is forced to waste the cash sending our kids to disneyland and other ‘enrichment’…I’m seriously considering sending our credit to a school that really needs it this year if I can win that argument…unreal!
I hope I have not convinced anyone not to donate, but the distortions & selfishness our society encourages are maddening!
It is very valuable way for schools to get money. I hope all donate. I have seen it only benefit the kids and the school in general. I have never seen it misused in any way. I am not saying it isn’t. But in my experience, it must be rare because I have been in a lot of schools.
It’s a sign of how dysfunctional our state government is that we have such a stupid law.
For every dollar you give for something marginally useful like a field trip, that’s a dollar not available for other state programs like roads, parks, healthcare, actual education facilities, personnel, and supplies, etc. If the legislature could do their jobs and allocate resources wisely and fairly we wouldn’t need silly and horribly inefficient programs like this.
This law began some 20+ years ago before I retired as a principal. The law was specific. We could not use the funds for classroom conditions, hiring regular teachers, or textbooks or regular curriculum. The funding was for special events, special purchases such as physical education equipment, drama programs, school trips, and so forth. I was disturbed last night watching the local news to hear one of the “newbie” news readers say it must be donated right away to be spent on books and supplies. That was not correct and formed a false impression. It is absolutely true that rich school environments get richer. Poor schools absolutely need this money or their students lose out on special things. Yes, funds can be designated for specific programs such as girls’ volleyball. Schools that abuse this designation by allocating it to specific students are really not working rightly.
Maybe those promoting the use of these credits could go into the low income schools and “teach” the concept to parents who could then go out and get donations to help their schools. I know there would be lots of happy donors if they only knew somebody.
Ask at work and at church or in the grocery store. You will find them.
This credit takes money out of Education or general fund and gives it to mostly to rich or even the Loft Theater. It could work for schools if the credits went to one common education pot and then distributed equally to rich and poor schools.
My credit is going to BASIS. I reward schools that educate children, regardless of skin color or income.
Yikes Loft Cinema donors receive a deduction not a credit. My mistake.