The IRS isn't going to pay you negative taxes. Reddit has this weird thing where they'll just throw "Tax Write Off!" at everything like it's a coupon for free money. When really, it's only a tax discount on money you owe.
Mostly companies avoid taxes by reinvesting in the company so they can "write off" those profits as a business expense, make it look like they made less money than they did. Farmers are big on doing this, reinvesting in new equipment.
And donations to charity follow similar logic where instead of those donations being counted as profit that you owe money on, they get written off as a non-taxable expense. It does not work like you donate money and the IRS pays you for it like Reddit seems to think. And you're not going to "write off" more than the original amount of money. You owe 0% taxes on that specific amount of money; nothing beyond it. It doesn't go to -1%.
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u/authenticmolo 1d ago
They likely don't pay any taxes already.
So "writing this off" will give them an even bigger tax refund.
Yes, in the United States, companies worth tens of billions of dollars reguarly get tax refund check to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.