Puffs

Tired of waiting for Spring ? ? ?

“Spring – Autumn” I’ve always considered opposite ends of the same book case. Consider the following quote from a book I’m reading about the autumn of 1956.

“Autumn arrives fitfully to Brooklyn, feinting forward, dropping back, hinting at itself. Wool-sock mornings, shirtsleeve afternoons.”

If I didn’t know better I’d think someone was writing about the Spring of 2023.

It does amaze me that after 67 years the more things change, the more they stay the same.

A O

Last week I talked a little about possible donation for any charitable endeavor. I was mostly suggesting either the Lawrence Community Building project or the Sacred Heart Church renovation and repair. I had a paper listing a number of options, but I lost the paper, so I’m just going to talk about a couple of the most popular ways donations are made.

CASH – The most simple way to make a donation is to just donate cash. If you worry about any tax consequence, your donations along with medical expenses and taxes should exceed your ‘standard deduction’ on your income tax return which for a married couple is around $25,000.

This is a simple and easy way to make a donation. The ability to itemize deductions on your tax return is a benefit, but unless you have sufficient deduction to make that $25,000 level, it will not afford you any tax relief.

For many people that is not a concern, so cash is the easiest way to make donations . . . large or small.

COMMODITIES – One way to make what might be a substantial donation and is more common in rural Nebraska is the sale of commodities: grain – livestock – hay.

Your donation of commodities will be sold in the non-profit charitable organization’s name. They will receive the cash since it will be sold in their name and the donor does not need include the proceeds in their income for the year. The donor does not need to worry about any tax consequence since the income is not required to be listed. If you followed what happened at the Lawrence Community Building Committee’s Fund Raiser last week, a block of hay donated secured the committee about $11,000 and the donor did not have to worry about including it in his income for this year and pay taxes on it.

The sale of grain or livestock is very similar. The donor just has to make sure the sale proceeds are directed directly to the non-profit.

RETIREMENT DISTRIBUTIONS – If you are included in that group of people over 70 years of age, you have other options. Your IRA account can be directed to send your yearly distribution to a non-profit. This is a great and easy method to make donations and I understand it is a popular choice by many in the U. S. You would be best advised to consult your tax preparer and the company administering your account to do so.

Other retirement accounts may also be used, but you had best consult your tax accountant.

ESTATES – Donations can be made in the settlement of an estate as well. Talk to your attorney for the best way to do this.

I do know that both the community building effort and the Sacred Heart Church repair-renovation effort has not had a lot of “large” donations. The community building effort received one substantial donation of $150,000, but all other donations have been considerable smaller.

The Lawrence community is grateful of the number of Lawrence native citizen that have also donated towards the causes and they continue to pray for their continued help.

The donations can be made easily, but they do take you to start the donation journey.

I ask you to please do so.

A O

Since I’ve mentioned taxes above I’m going to make another comment here . . . just for the fun of it.

Our current president proposed his budget just recently and of course, it brought a lot of reaction, both favorable and not so much so. I thought I’d just comment on one reaction to it.

The president and the liberals have spent decades claiming that ‘high-income’ households don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes. The new budget proposal primary policy is a tax hike based on that assertion.

I’m certainly not in the high income group and whatever is done will not have much of an effect on me. However. One of the things liberals like to do is make a big “splash” (like saying high income people don’t pay their fair share) and then sit back and see what happens.

I came across some facts from the Internal Revenue Service after the budget proposal was made public and a couple of interesting things I noticed were:

• The taxpayers in the top one percent of all earned income actually pay 42 percent of all income taxes paid.

• If you include the top 5 percent of payers, you’d find that they pay a total of 62 percent of all the income taxes paid.

Yes, I’ve also read of isolated instances where someone with millions of dollars of earned income has found a way to pay no income taxes. If they used legal and proper ways to do so, I don’t have a problem with that as they would be just following the law.

If they did something illegal, make them pay the price. I just get so tired of those liberal (Democrats) constantly blasting the rich with lies.

In case you’re interested, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers (less than $42,200) pay 2 percent of all income taxes paid.

Yes, it does seem that the U. S. income tax system that was started with the concept of taxpayers paying according to their ability to pay is a true today as it ever was.

A O

Did you have a grand celebration of St. Patrick’s Day? I didn’t have a single glass of green beer . . . and I’m OK with that. I always thought making a perfectly good glass of beer green, was a terrible waste.

However, the yearly celebration of St. Patrick reminded me of a book I read many years ago. The title was: “How the Irish saved civilization.”

It was a book recommended by a brother and was part of a series about the “Middle Ages.”

The whole series of books was interesting, especially this one. I would recommend it to anyone, “Irish” or not.

A O