[conservatism_IS_compassion]

A question:

A couple of years ago Congress changed the law such that money taken from your IRA but paid directly to a charity from your IRA as a charitable donation does not count as taxable income. This had an effect similar to itemizing your charitable donations (but not your state taxes) without forfeiting your access to the standard deduction.

Is that provision unchanged? The increase in the standard deduction makes exploitation of that provision more certain to be valuable - if it is still available in 2018.

[Justa]

I don’t know but I think charitable donations are still deductible in a standard return. I use TaxAct Online and I recall their Q&A has the charitable contributions deduction.

Now, just how do you ‘exploit’ the charitable contributions deduction?