Skip to navigationSkip to main contentSkip to right columnADVERTISEMENTTobi Opeyemi AmureTue, July 28, 2026 at 6:06 PM GMT+2 6 min readGenerosity is one of the few money decisions most people make without running the math first. You write the check because something moved you, and the arithmetic shows up later, if it shows up at all.The ritual is familiar enough to be invisible. A donation goes out in December. A receipt comes back in January. The number lands on a tax return in April and then disappears into a filing cabinet until the next holiday season.Nobody checks the second half of the trip. Where the money actually went after it left the account, who controlled it once it got there, and whether the group that cashed the check was the same group doing the work.That is a lot of trust to extend to a form letter. Americans extended $617.20 billion in giving in 2025, the first year the total giving cleared $600 billion, according to Giving USA.Washington has decided to start checking. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threw his weight behind a package of nonprofit disclosure bills last week, and the timing lands on the charitable deduction at the exact moment millions more filers are about to claim one.Treasury is rewriting Form 990 while the House moves four disclosure bills.valiantsin suprunovich / Getty ImagesThe tax code treats your giving differently this year than it did last year, and most people have not noticed yet.Starting with the 2026 tax year, filers who take the standard deduction can write off up to $1,000 in cash donations, or $2,000 for joint filers, a break that did not exist on last year's return, according to Fidelity Charitable.That is a big deal for the roughly 86% of filers the Tax Foundation expects to skip itemizing this year, as TheStreet has reported.More Treasury: BofA sees 5-year Treasury bond bear market ending