For a while now the Associated Press wire service we subscribe to here at The Business Journal has been running a feature called “Not Real News.” It debunks some of the so-called “fake news” that tends to circulate in our new media environment.
Most of the time, it’s just one or two items. But the one released today is chock-full of some wacky stuff, from what happens to the money we donate at checkout in our favorite stores to how the 2012 Olympics opening ceremonies is not proof that people knew about Covid-19 nine years ago.
NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week, by the Associated Press
Stores can’t write off customer donations made at checkout
CLAIM: When a customer elects to donate to charity at a store’s checkout counter, the store can write off that donation on its own end-of-year taxes.
THE FACTS: Stores can’t write off a customer’s point-of-sale donations, because they don’t count as company income, according to tax policy experts. Stores are only allowed to write off their own donations, such as when a store donates a certain portion of all its proceeds to charity. A widely circulating meme, shared thousands of times this week on Facebook and Instagram, claimed that retailers ask customers to add a little more for charity when checking out in order to fund their own tax write-offs. That’s misguided, according to Renu Zaretsky, a writer at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “The only way a company can write off money is if it’s income,”...
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