Annual Tax Statement for Spouses

Jolynn Palmbach

Curious if and how you may use head of householding and soft credits to process statements for spouses. Especially if you include a letter with the statement.

Do you mail the letter and statement to each spouse separately?

Or do you mail one letter, and attach each spouse's statement to that, so the household gets one mailing?

Do you ever incorporate soft credits?

Dariel Dixon 2

@Jolynn Palmbach I don't see this as an issue. If your organization has come up with this criteria, it maybe for a reason. It also sounds like this criteria has been in place for a while. If one spouse gets a letter and another doesn't due to not meeting the criteria, I think it could possibly be a problem, but I think you do need to be definitive in your addressing. In a case like this, I think it would be unclear if I got a letter for Mr. and Mrs. Jack White and it only had his gifts and hers were excluded due to not meeting the criteria. If the letter is only addressed to Mr. White, I think it becomes clearer as to the fact that this summary is for gifts not receipted already (assuming that you don't receipt your recurring gifts per instance) or for donors who have made multiple gifts per year.

Regardless of whatever you decide, there's always going to be some exceptions. You will just have to be ready to resolve those issues as they arrive.

JoAnn Strommen

@Jolynn Palmbach We do not send annual statements. We do run a consolidated receipt for recurring donors. The only ones I provide detail for are those with individual gifts of $250 or more. This mailing includes our charitable contribution statement.

When I have fielded 2-3 annual requests from donors for an annual statement, I do not include charitable contribution/tax statement as they have already been issued a receipt. Our policy is that we do not receipt a gift more than once with a tax/charitable contribution statement.

Jolynn Palmbach

@JoAnn Strommen Thanks for your example. To confirm, if both spouses were to meet your criteria, they would receive separate mailings?

JoAnn Strommen

@Jolynn Palmbach

If both have a recurring gift (and we do have several instances of this) we would run a consolidated receipt for each showing their hard credit gifts.

that's what we do - works for us. ?