Question:
Being that charitable donations are tax deductible, does that add on the maaser-able income, bc now I have earned more money?
Answer:
It isn’t actual income, because you didn’t get any money from them, but since you can deduct the money you paid for taxes from your total income, now you have less of a “maaser deduction” to deduct.
But then everytime you give tzeddakah, you need to give more tzeddakah because of the tax deduction. How do you catch up
You don’t have to give more tzedakah. It is just since you now have the tax reduction, which was reducing the total amount the you earned, if you will have less of a tax payment you automatically have less of this “maaser reduction” to calculate. For example, a person made $50,000 over the year, and he had to pay $10,000 in taxes, regarding maaser it is as if he earned $40,000. Now that he has the tax break and he is only paying $6,000, so his net earning for maaser would be $44,000.
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