One of the changes made by the new tax act was to increase the standard deduction to $12,000 or $24,000 for a married couple filing jointly. The upshot of that will be that many people will claim the standard deduction rather than itemize. If they make any charitable contributions but total itemized deductions are still less than the standard deductions, those deductions will no longer be deductible.
There is a way to still achieve the charitable deduction, however, if the taxpayer can bunch his or her charitable contributions into a single year. For example, if the taxpayer makes charitable contributions of $6,000 per year and has the financial ability to make a contribution of $24,000 in one year, the taxpayer’s contribution of $24,000 will exceed the standard deduction of $12,000 and it will benefit the taxpayer to itemize.
If the charity or charities would benefit more by receiving the $6,000 per year rather than $24,000 in one year, the taxpayer can establish a donor advised fund. The donor advised fund is a mutual fund in which you make tax deductible charitable contributions to the fund and establish an account. The contributed funds remain in the account until the taxpayer decides to direct them to charity. So in this case the taxpayer would contribute $24,000 to the fund in year one, and could direct the fund to distribute $6,000 per year to his or her preferred charity or charities.