IRS sources for receipting rules
Updated
These are the IRS pages behind the receipt rules pages. The rules come from the IRS, and the IRS can change its pages. Always check the current version for your situation, and ask a professional if you are unsure.
Acknowledgments and disclosure
- Charitable contributions: Written acknowledgments (opens in a new tab): the six items a written acknowledgment for a gift of $250 or more contains. See What an IRS written acknowledgment must contain.
- Charitable contributions: Quid pro quo contributions (opens in a new tab): the disclosure statement for a payment over $75, its exceptions, good faith estimates and the penalty. See Option B and the quid pro quo rules.
- Publication 1771, Charitable Contributions: Substantiation and Disclosure Requirements (opens in a new tab): the IRS's guide for charities and donors. It covers the record a donor needs for a monetary gift, the contemporaneous written acknowledgment (what it contains, when it must be received), the token, membership and religious-benefit exceptions, sample wording, and the quid pro quo statement and penalty.
Donors and non-cash gifts
- Publication 526, Charitable Contributions (opens in a new tab): the donor's guide to which organizations qualify, what can be deducted, how much, what records to keep and how to report. It holds the donor's record rules by size of non-cash deduction. See IRS rules for non-cash gifts.
- Publication 561, Determining the Value of Donated Property (opens in a new tab): how donors and appraisers work out fair market value, and what information supports the deduction, including appraisals.
- Form 8283, Noncash Charitable Contributions (opens in a new tab): the form a donor files when the deduction for all non-cash gifts is more than $500. Its instructions are at Instructions for Form 8283 (opens in a new tab).
- Charitable contribution deductions (opens in a new tab): an IRS overview of the donor-side rules, pointing to Publications 526, 561 and 1771.
What FreeCharityReceipts does and doesn't cover
FreeCharityReceipts prints a receipt from the details you enter. It doesn't check them against these rules. It doesn't produce Form 8283, appraisals or any other tax form, and it gives no tax or legal advice. The rules pages say what each receipt prints and what it doesn't.
Forms and publications not covered here include those for vehicle donations (Publications 4302 and 4303 are named in Publication 1771), conservation gifts and gifts of services.
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