Exploring the Recent Tax Reform’s Impact on Charitable Giving

In January, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect across the country. The MCV Foundation’s director of gift planning Jane Garnet Brown met recently with nonprofit legal expert Bill Gray to explore what this tax reform means for charitable giving. Bill is a partner at McGuireWoods LLP and legal counsel to the MCV Foundation.

Jane Garnet’s conversation with Bill can be seen in the video above. During that conversation, Bill told us the legislation will have both positive and negative outcomes for individual donors, and that each person’s situation should be reviewed to determine specific impacts and strategies moving forward.

Most of the strategies or tools used in charitable giving remain effective despite the tax reform, Bill said, including those that have to do with gifts of appreciated securities or other property, charitable gift annuities, charitable lead trusts and remainder interest in personal residences or farms.

When looking into some of the tax changes and their effects, Bill pointed out that the process shouldn’t distract donors from the fact that the underlying needs for giving still exist. “The needs, in fact, in the areas of education, healthcare and social services, are greater than they ever have been,” he said.

Many of the techniques for addressing these needs may be accomplished through planned giving, which is a type of giving that enables donors to create living legacies and help shape the future of healthcare, research and education on the MCV Campus. To learn more about establishing a lasting legacy on the MCV Campus, visit our planned giving page.

To download a summary of the topics discussed in the video above, click the image to the right.