Donate Stock to Charity Calculator

Most tax strategies move one number. Donating appreciated securities moves two at once, and both movements are statutory rather than clever. First, the capital gain vanishes: the shares leave your hands by gift, so no sale ever happens on your return, and the charity — exempt under section 501 — sells them without tax. Second, the deduction is the fair market value of long-term appreciated shares, not their cost, under the general rule of section 170.

The alternative most donors actually follow — sell the position, give the proceeds — funds the same charity with smaller numbers on every line. The gains tax comes out of the gift itself, so the charity receives less; the deduction is measured by the smaller cash gift, so the tax saving shrinks in proportion. On a $100,000 position carrying $80,000 of gain, the round trip through a sale costs roughly $19,000 of charity money and several thousand dollars of donor money, for no benefit to anyone but the Treasury.

The strategy scales with the gain share, not the gift size. A position that has doubled monetises modestly; a founder position with near-zero basis monetises the full long-term rate on almost every dollar. It is the standard reason donor-advised funds are stuffed with single-stock positions in December.

Two provisions of the 2025 Act reshaped the value of every charitable deduction from 2026, and most published guidance still ignores both.

The first is a floor: itemizers now lose the benefit of the first 0.5% of AGI of the year’s charitable giving. At $400,000 of AGI the first $2,000 of gifts deducts nothing. The floor applies annually rather than per gift, which quietly rewrites the bunching arithmetic — ten years of modest gifts pay the floor ten times, one large year pays it once. A large stock gift into a donor-advised fund is the cleanest way to concentrate a decade of giving into a single floor.

The second is a cap on the top bracket’s benefit. The rewritten section 68 trims itemized deductions by 2/37 of the amount above the 37% bracket threshold — arithmetic that lands exactly on 35 cents of benefit per deducted dollar for a top-bracket taxpayer. The old Pease limitation phased out with AGI and was repealed in 2018; this replacement is flat, permanent, and aimed precisely at the people making six-figure stock gifts. Every figure on this page prices the deduction at 35 cents where it applies, not the 37 the bracket implies.

Shares held one year or less. Section 170(e)(1) reduces the deduction for what it calls ordinary income property — including any stock that would not yet produce long-term gain — to its basis. The appreciation deducts nothing, and the forfeited deduction does not come back later. Eleven months and three weeks of holding followed by a donation is the most expensive impatience in charitable planning; the cure is a calendar.

Shares showing a loss. A donated losing position takes its loss to the grave: the charity has no use for it, and you cannot claim a loss on property you gave away. Sell the position yourself — the capital loss lands on your return, offsetting gains at up to the top rate — and donate the cash, which deducts identically. The gift is the same; the loss is saved. Any adviser who sees appreciated-stock instructions applied to a depreciated position should stop the transfer.

Between those two poles sits the ideal donation: long-term, low-basis, publicly traded — the last property class exempt from the qualified-appraisal requirement, which is its own quiet advantage over gifts of real estate or private shares.

Gifts of appreciated property deduct against at most 30% of AGI in a year, against 60% for cash. A $300,000 stock gift on a $400,000 AGI deducts $120,000 now; the remaining $180,000 carries forward for up to five years, deducting against the same 30% ceiling each year, with each year’s 0.5% floor taking its bite first. The carryforward is genuinely valuable but not free money — a donor whose income is about to fall, or who may stop itemizing, can strand part of it.

There is an election worth knowing at the margin: a donor may choose to deduct appreciated property at BASIS instead of market value, in exchange for the 50%-of-AGI ceiling rather than 30%. For low-gain positions and high gift-to-income ratios the election occasionally wins; for the low-basis positions this page is really about, it almost never does. It exists, it is irrevocable for the year, and it is a question for the preparer rather than a default.

The donor-advised fund is the operational wrapper for all of this: transfer the shares once, take this year’s deduction on this year’s terms, and grant to working charities on any schedule afterwards. It solves the real frictions — charities that cannot accept stock, gifts meant for many recipients, a deduction wanted now with decisions wanted later — at the cost of an administrative fee and the loss of direct ownership. What it does not change is a single number on this page: the fund is a conduit, and the arithmetic of the gift is settled the day the shares move.