Tax returns show which Washington counties give the most to charity

Americans who itemized their tax returns gave about $250 billion, or 3.4 percent of their income, to charity in the 2017 tax year, but charitable giving varied significantly between states, according to new IRS statistics.

Charitable giving correlates strongly with religiosity: The states with the highest rates of giving tend to also have high rates of residents who say religion is very important to them.

Utah had the highest rate of charitable giving in the nation in 2017. A significant portion of its residents belong to the Mormon church, which emphasizes tithing, the practice of giving 10 percent of your income to the church. Several states in the deep South, where evangelical churches also emphasize tithing, gave relatively large portions of their income to charity. The IRS classifies donations to churches as charity.

In Washington, individuals and families that itemized their tax deductions gave about $6.2 billion, or 3.4 percent of their income, to charity.

Residents of Adams County, east of Spokane, were the most generous, giving about $6.7 million, or 6 percent of their income, to charity. Residents of Pend Oreille County, in the northwest corner of the state, were the stingiest, giving about 1.5 percent of their income to charity.

Thurston County residents who itemized gave about 3.0 percent of their income to charity in 2017, slightly more than Pierce County residents, who gave about 2.8 percent.

This analysis only includes taxpayers who itemize their tax returns. Most tax filers making more than $75,000 a year itemized in 2017. That year, itemized tax returns accounted for about two-thirds of the personal income reported to the IRS.

The U.S. Congress recently passed tax changes that raised the standard deduction and made it less likely people will itemize their taxes, but those changes did not take place until the 2018 tax year.

All data for this analysis comes from IRS county-level data, including state totals. The state totals in this analysis may be slightly off “because of disclosure protection procedures or the exclusion of returns that did not match based on the ZIP code,” according to the IRS. More details and caveats can be found here.

This story was originally published December 5, 2019 at 5:00 AM.