Statement and transaction date

[Jean-David Beyer]

On 12/28/2016 08:21 AM, Mike or Penny Novack wrote:

> Your books should reflect when YOU paid, not when it was
> collected/processed against your account.
> 

I am not sure about this.

I am treasurer for a tax-exempt organization. When someone makes a
donation by check, normally _I use the date written on the check_ as the
date of the gift.

But when the date on the check is late December, I look at the postmark
on the envelope. If they mailed it in December, I still use the date on
the check. Maybe even if postmark is January 2.

But when the postmark is January 15, I count the date of the gift as the
year of the postmark.

What my records say do not affect my organization, since we are so tax
exempt that we do not file income tax returns. But I do send each
contributor a "thank you" letter that they can use if they itemize their
income tax returns. So I will be sending out the 2016 letters pretty soon.

When I am on the other side of a transaction, I keep the thank-you notes
from the charitable organizations in case of audits, since I do itemize
my deductions. I have never been audited. I wondered about that one year
when I inherited a lot of money and donated _a lot_ of it to charity:
more than half my adjusted gross income. So I carried over some of the
contributions for a few years. But the IRS saw nothing funny about that:
no audit, no letter requesting explanation.

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