Yes! While on the surface one might think it’s just money leaving a tax-deferred plan and it doesn’t matter who’s getting it, this will have a huge effect on the subsequent tax obligations (bracket, margin) throughout retirement. Being able to model these properly will be very useful.

Here’s a friendly explanation from the IRS for anyone wondering what a QCD is and how it affects taxes: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/reminder-to-ira-owners-age-70-and-a-half-or-over-qualified-charitable-distributions-are-great-options-for-making-tax-free-gifts-to-charity

Adding a NonTaxable checkbox into More Options in Charity Expense is a simple fix for this suggestion.

Does a charity expense drawn from an IRA account and designated as tax deductible have similar modeling implications to a QCD?

Thank you.

I believe this would also have the desired output, I would love to see this option

Also need to reduce top-line taxable income by the amount of the QCD (in the Tax Analytics section).

Treating as tax deductible won’t have the correct effect, as then it interacts with itemized vs standard, and various limits for contributions etc. The beauty of the QCD is that it does not even count as income so it does not effect those other things - plus it satisfies the RMD requirement (only fo rIRAs, only up to $100k/yr).

Yes, but more specifically QCD would mean not just “not taxable” but reduces RMD needed that year.

totally agree that QCD’s are unique from non-taxable charities and needs to be an option so as not to impact the actual taxable income – and thus AGIs - which in turn impacts IRMAAs

I don’t believe so. A qcd does not effect AGI, upon which many other tax calcs are based.

If this feature was available, it would help planning for Roth conversions for reducing future RMDs. If I could see the effect of QCDs on taxable income, it would help me decide whether to take Roth conversions now.

I tried adding a charity expense and having it taken from my IRA (tax deductible but unchecking the box “deduction only applies when itemizing”) but this only increased taxable income, as the program produced a taxable distribution to pay for the expense.

This is really important for a LOT of people. Every Muslim has an obligation to distribute 2.5% of their idle wealth in charity every year. So things in active use — home, car, clothes, furniture, etc. — are excluded.

An efficient way to handle Zakat is by gifting appreciated stocks, directly or via a DAF, to eligible charities. I plan to use QCD’s during retirement but haven’t yet found a way to model this in Projection Lab.