[michaelmrose]

An eventual audit that if they hit the anti lottery could cost them more than they could possibly save. Remember that you don't get to just deduct a donation from your taxes you deduct it from your income which lowers your taxes. For example if you ultimately pay about 30% of your income in federal taxes and you lower your income by 1000 you ultimately have reduced your taxes by $300.

Donations 5000 and up require the person you donated to to fill out a tax form for that donation so making up the numbers would require a confederate in the donating org to be willing to risk prison to enrich you.

https://www.amazinggoodwill.com/donating/IRS-guidelines

Also remember that the bottom half of the country pays little federal income tax (because they don't make much of the income in America) and the top 10-20% has MUCH better legal tax avoidance strategies.

It's likely that some portion of middle income individuals could avoid a small dollar figure in taxes by inflating or even fabricating a string of small donations and presumably out of hundreds of millions of people a few do but you would have to make up a LOT of bullshit donations to make much of a difference but before you could actually save much money you would end up sticking out like a sore thumb. Yes Mr IRS auditor I totally donated over 1000 in goods to goodwill on 10 separate occasions over 2021 and I totally deserve the corresponding $3000 deduction!

On net its probably a small issue. At this point we have people making 6 figures + who just don't file tax returns and haven't been addressed.