Carry over charitable donations till next year

[robertl1234]

I am self employed and I had a rough year this year and ended up with 0 taxable income.  I did however make a number of charitable donations during the year, amounting to nearly 1500.  TurboTax has selected standard deduction for me (though it wont matter since I have 0 taxable income).  From what I understand I am able to carry over charitable contributions to the tax year if it was limited due to AGI.  I have some questions on how to do this in turbotax however. 

1) First of all, since turbotax is selecting standard deduction, do I have to switch it to itemized deductions?  I have all my information itemized already, but it selected standard.  Though it doesn't matter either way in regards to the tax.  

2) Do I record the charitable donations on this years tax return AND next years?  Or is there some other process I need to do in turbotax to do this carry over? 

Thanks!!
Bob

[DawnC · Accepted solution]

You can change your deduction to itemized by following these instructions - How do I change from the standard deduction to itemized (or vice-versa)?

Only record your 2019 contributions on this tax return for tax year 2019.  If you have anything to carryover due to AGI limits, that amount is entered on next year's Schedule A when you itemize.  

[Larch45]

Is the idea of this to aggregate several years of donations until they are enough along with other factors to make sense to itemize? Last year we took the new Standard deduction, therefore we got no credit for our relatively small charitable donations, which were enough to help us  prior to the tax law changes. Can I aggregate our charitable deductions across several years until I reach an amount of deduction above the standard? The instruction in the answer says to only add your 2019 charitable donations, but I am on the Charitable carryover screen and it suggests adding deductions from previous years.

[JohnW222]

No, by law you're not allowed to aggregate several years of donations and then claim them as an itemized deduction when they reach a high enough amount to provide a tax benefit.

According to the IRS in When To Deduct on page 13 of Publication 526, Charitable Contributions, "You can deduct your contributions only in the year you actually make them in cash or other property (or in a later carryover year)….

These limits on contributions are based on a taxpayer's adjusted gross income (AGI) in a given year, and that's when carryover comes into play -- from previous years when a taxpayer had more contributions than were allowable based on her AGI, and remainders are now being carried over to the current tax year.

[BarryRK]

My question is similar, but checking, just in case....
I am itemizing. I also purchased an electric car, which gives me a $7500. tax credit that I may only use this year, however my income and deductions are only allowing me to use $6500 of this credit. I have given a significant percentage to charity, but not more than the 60% of AGI which would allow me to carry some of my contributions over to next year. My question-- may I still carry $10,000 of my contributions over to next year, which would increase my tax burden enough to allow me to make use of the full $7500. electric car tax credit?

[DaveF1006]

This was a good question and I asked my colleagues and they were in complete agreement that there is no election process to defer charitable donations to a following year. It is done automatically when donations exceed certain AGI limits.