Giving shows up in a plan two ways, and they work differently. A Qualified Charitable Distribution sends money straight from an IRA to a charity. The charitable deduction lowers the tax on ordinary cash gifts from 2026 onward. Both live on the Charitable Giving page under Tax Strategy.

They do not stack. A QCD is excluded from your income, so there is nothing left to deduct - you cannot take the deduction on the same dollars. Give from your IRA and you get the exclusion; give from your bank account and you may get the deduction.

Qualified Charitable Distributions

A QCD is a direct transfer from an eligible IRA to a charity. The qualified amount is excluded from federal taxable income and from AGI / MAGI - which means it can quietly reduce IRMAA surcharges, Social Security taxability, and ACA Marketplace MAGI in the same year. It can also satisfy that year's RMD without producing the taxable distribution an RMD usually does.

QCDs do not create spendable cash. The money goes from the IRA straight to the charity; the planner reflects this by reducing the IRA balance without crediting any account with the proceeds. A QCD is not an expense, not a withdrawal that funds living costs, and not a charitable deduction on top of the income exclusion.

Where it lives

The Charitable Giving page lives under Tax Strategy in the sidebar, alongside Roth Strategy. The card also appears on the Expenses hub as a cross-reference so users browsing planned outflows can find it, but the rules are configured (and edited) only from the Tax Strategy side.

Eligibility

• Owner age 70½ or older. The engine uses a whole-year floor of 70 since it works in calendar years. Confirm exact intra-year timing with your IRA custodian.
• Eligible account types only: Traditional IRA, SEP IRA, SIMPLE IRA, and rollover IRAs. Not allowed from 401(k), 403(b), 457(b), TSP, pensions, HSA, taxable, cash, or any Roth account. The source-account picker on the QCD page filters to eligible accounts automatically.
• If the plan has no eligible IRA, the page shows a warning and blocks adding a rule.

Per-rule fields

• Owner - primary or spouse. Each rule is scoped to one person; add a second rule if both spouses are giving.
• Amount per year - the dollar amount to send to charity each year inside the rule's age window. Fixed annual amount in today's dollars unless you set a growth rate.
• Start age / End age - the inclusive window. Use Lifetime for the end age when the gift is intended to continue indefinitely; the simulation honors it for as long as the owner is alive and the IRA still has a balance.
• Source account - Auto lets the engine draw from any QCD-eligible IRA owned by the rule owner (mirrors how the engine already aggregates an owner's Tax-deferred balances for RMD purposes). Pick a specific account when the gift must come from one custodian for compliance reasons.
• Apply toward RMD - on by default. When on, the QCD counts dollar-for-dollar against that year's RMD requirement, so the taxable RMD slice shrinks by the QCD amount. When off (rare), the rule still produces a charitable distribution excluded from income, but the gross RMD is still taken in full.
• Cap at RMD amount - off by default. When on, the applied QCD will never exceed that year's gross RMD, so the gift stops growing in years where the RMD itself shrinks (late-plan, depleted IRA). When off, you can give above the RMD, subject to the annual per-person limit and your account balance.

Annual limit

The IRS caps QCDs at a per-person annual amount ($108,000 for 2026, indexed). The engine applies this cap automatically. There is no engine warning if a single rule is below the limit; if you stack multiple rules for the same owner and the sum exceeds the cap, the engine clamps the total to the annual limit silently.

RMD interaction (the meaningful one)

The engine processes QCDs before finalizing that year's taxable RMD. So:

• RMD is $40,000 and QCD is $15,000 → $15,000 satisfies part of the RMD, $25,000 of taxable RMD remains, IRA balance drops by $40,000, no cash arrives. AGI and MAGI fall by $15,000.
• RMD is $40,000 and QCD is $60,000 → the full RMD is satisfied by the QCD, $0 taxable RMD remains, IRA balance drops by $60,000, no cash arrives. The extra $20,000 above the RMD is excluded from income too, but it does not bank a future RMD credit.
• Cap-at-RMD on, RMD $40,000, scheduled QCD $60,000 → only $40,000 is sent to charity; the other $20,000 stays in the IRA.

Interaction with Roth conversions

QCDs reduce the taxable RMD slice in the same year. That frees up bracket room for any active Roth conversion strategy - so combining a QCD with a Fill-to-Bracket strategy can quietly increase the conversion the bracket-fill engine sees as feasible that year. This is reflected automatically; you don't have to do anything special.

The charitable deduction (2026 onward)

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act created a charitable deduction you can take without itemizing, starting with tax year 2026. It is worth up to $2,000 filing jointly and $1,000 for every other status, on cash gifts to public charities, and it sits on top of your standard deduction rather than replacing any of it. It is permanent, and the amounts are fixed by statute - they never rise with inflation.

You do not enter an amount. The planner reads it from your expenses: any recurring expense with the category Charitable giving counts. That avoids entering the same gift twice, and it means the deduction automatically follows that expense's start and end ages, so giving that stops at 85 stops earning the deduction at 85.

What qualifies. Only cash gifts to public charities. Gifts of appreciated stock or other property do not count, and neither do gifts to donor-advised funds or private foundations. An expense category cannot tell these apart, so the page carries a checkbox - My charitable giving is cash to qualifying public charities - which is on by default because it is right for the ordinary case. Turn it off and your giving is still modeled as spending, it simply earns no deduction.

It lowers taxable income, not AGI. This is the difference from a QCD, and it matters more than the size of the deduction. A QCD comes out of AGI, so it can pull you under an IRMAA threshold or reduce how much of your Social Security is taxed. The charitable deduction does neither - it reduces the income you are taxed on and nothing else. Plenty of published summaries call it an "above-the-line" deduction; on the point that actually affects a plan, they are misleading.

Charitable giving is a Plus feature, the deduction along with QCDs. Both are core tax treatment, and gating one but not the other would be arbitrary when they sit on the same page. On the free tier your giving is still modeled as spending; it simply earns no deduction, and the plan lists it among the Plus features left out of your results.

A note on scale. Capped at $2,000 and never indexed, this is worth a few hundred dollars a year in tax. It is modeled because it is part of the law from 2026, not because it will change your retirement.

Filing status changes over time. The cap follows the filing status the engine derives for each projection year. A couple filing jointly gets $2,000 while both are alive; after a death the plan moves to Qualifying Surviving Spouse and then Head of Household, and the cap becomes $1,000 - note that QSS takes $1,000 here even though it takes the full joint standard deduction.

Where charitable giving appears in outputs

• Dashboard. QCDs are reflected in the post-QCD taxable RMD column and in the IRA balance decline. They don't show up as income or expenses on cash-flow charts.
• Year-by-year projection. A QCD column appears (when any year has a QCD) next to the RMD column. The charitable deduction has no column of its own - it is folded into the standard deduction, so you won't find it as a separate line.
• Plan Report PDF. A Charitable Giving section sits alongside Roth Strategy and RMD, listing each QCD rule and, below it, your giving and what is deductible.
• AI Review export. A QCD section follows Roth Conversions with per-rule details, and a charitable deduction section reports your giving, whether you declared it qualifying, and the deductible amount - so a reviewer doesn't recommend a deduction the planner has already applied.
• Tax Strategy hub card. Shows your largest QCD rule, or the deductible amount when you have giving but no QCDs.

Not yet modeled

• The engine aggregates an owner's Tax-deferred accounts into one bucket. If the user picks a specific source account, the choice is recorded but the draw still comes from the aggregated bucket. For tax-purpose reporting this is equivalent; for custodial sourcing it's not.
• The post-70½ deductible-IRA contribution offset (the "anti-abuse" rule that can shrink the excludable QCD when the owner makes deductible IRA contributions after 70½) is not modeled. Most retirees aren't affected; if you are, model the offset by reducing the rule's annual amount manually.
• Donor-advised funds, supporting organizations, and private foundations are not validated as ineligible QCD recipients - the planner assumes a QCD goes to a qualifying charity. The charitable deduction is different: because the same restriction applies there, the page carries a checkbox to declare that your giving does not qualify.
• No charity database, no tax-form (1099-R / Form 8606) reporting, no investment advice on what to give from.