Groundhog Day All Over Again: Annual Updates for Review in February
Congratulations, you’ve made it through the gauntlet of calendar-year-end activities! But before you sigh with relief, here’s a list of items you should review annually. Ideally, these are completed in the peaceful window between the mailing of your 1099-Rs to annuitants in January and the filing of 1099-Rs with the IRS in March.
Plan Your Postmark – Operational Changes at USPS Can Affect Gift Dates
Time to Update Your PIF Valuation Rate for 2026
Don’t Rush to Transmit 1099-R File to IRS
Meet the New Form 8283
PG Calc Webinar Using Donor Surveys in Planned Gift Marketing
A number of organizations have experienced remarkable success using the donor survey. In this session, Dr. Russell James reviews the scientific research, academic theory, and real-world practical applications of how to use donor surveys to identify prospects, increase interest in planned giving, and even measure the success of your overall marketing efforts.
How will you stay on top of planned giving trends and developments in 2026? How will you train your staff and colleagues on the art and techniques of gift planning? Each month in 2026, PG Calc’s webinar series will bring you the latest thinking on a wide range of gift planning topics from PG Calc experts and thought leaders such as Russell James, Andrew Fussner, Ericka Webb, and Alasdair Halliday.
You can easily import market values for all trusts in GiftWrap with a few mouse clicks, provided that your import file is formatted correctly.
Import files must be in comma-delimited (.csv) format. Because of this, any number being imported should not include a comma, as it will be misinterpreted. For instance, if a charitable remainder trust (CRT) has a 12/31 market value of 123,456.78, it will erroneously import as a Trust with a value of $123.45 because of the comma.
To avoid this mistake, prepare the file in Excel and then save it as a .csv. Doing so will allow you to format the market values without a comma by selecting format as number and deselecting the “Use 1000 separator (,)” feature.
The import file must include a field that also appears in each trust record in GiftWrap, such as the Trust ID or Gift Key. Some charities use a custodian’s account number for the trust, which they have previously stored in one of the account fields. Your import file must contain 9 columns, even if some of them are left completely blank. The columns are as follows:
Trust ID
Gift Key
Account 1
Account 2
Account 3
Account 4
Account 5
Market Value
Market Value Date
Once you have your file prepared correctly, the rest is easy.
Open Utilities in GiftWrap and go to Import Market Values.
Mark the First line is column header check box if your file includes column headers (recommended).
Click Choose File and use the Browse feature to locate the file you wish to import.
Click Open.
Click Import.
Once the import completes, a message will report the number of records in the file that were imported successfully and the number that were not imported. Examine any errors.
If you have questions about how to resolve them, please reach out to Client Services at 888-474-2252 or support@pgcalc.com.
From the Blog: The RMD – Timing Is Everything
Does the timing of the first RMD for a 73-year-old matter?
A question from a client came up about a donor who was turning 73 in the calendar year using their Individual Retirement Account (IRA) to fund a charitable gift. Would a qualified charitable distribution (QCD) taken in the year the donor turns 73 but before the donor’s actual 73rd birthday count toward the Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) for that year? For instance, can a donor turning 73 on December 31st establish a QCD charitable gift annuity (CGA) on December 1st and still have it count toward their RMD?
Also From the Blog: Plan Your Postmark – Operational Changes at USPS Can Affect Gift Dates
In 2025 the US Post Office made a quiet shift in its operations that resulted in some gifts handed to the US Post Office on December 30th and 31st being postmarked in January. Donors and charities should be aware of this change, as the mailbox rule to establish a gift date for a mailed check relates to when the postmark is applied not when the US Post Office came in possession of the mail.
In 2025 the US Post Office made changes to its transportation operations which no longer guarantee that mail deposited in a mailbox or handed to a postal worker at a retail post office will arrive at a processing facility on the same day. This means mail that is simply dropped off in a mailbox or US Post Office may not be postmarked for a day or two until it reaches the processing facility . . .
This operational change also has implications for your donors’ tax filings, the filing of Form 5227 for charitable trusts, and the mailing of paper 1099-Rs. Don’t forget the deadline to file paper Forms1099-Rs with the IRS is March 2, 2026. The deadline to file Forms 1099-R electronically to the IRS is March 31, 2026.
Does your charity have a pooled income fund that is three or more years old? Now that we’re halfway through February, you should be able to get the information you need on the investment performance of the fund in 2025 so that you can determine the valuation rate for gifts to it in 2026. The valuation rate is used to determine the donor’s deduction.
The valuation rate for a fund that is three or more taxable years old is based on the highest annual yield of the fund during the previous three tax years, determined as described in Treas. Regs. 1.642(c)-6(c)(2) and 1.642(c)-6(c)(3). You can update this rate in PGM Anywhere under Customize > Pooled Funds > Edit > Highest return of last 3 years.
You can reach us at support@pgcalc.com or 888-474-2252 if you have questions.
Don’t Rush to Transmit 1099-R File to IRS
It’s typically a relief to anyone involved in the administration of charitable gift annuities (CGAs) to have sent the Form 1099-Rs to all the annuitants by January 31. That’s the biggest part of the tax reporting requirements for CGAs. But the information for all the 1099-Rs still needs to be sent to the IRS electronically by March 31 (or by February 28 for the small number of organizations who are still permitted to send the information on paper). The 1099-R paper filing deadline is March 2 in 2026, because February 28 falls on a Saturday.
In some cases, there is a temptation to rush to that second step – thinking that once the actual forms have gone out, it’s good to get the information to the IRS as quickly as possible. But we always urge charities not to rush the process, especially with larger gift annuity programs. Inevitably, there will be forms marked “return to sender” because of previously unknown address changes. There will also be notifications of deaths, and some adjustments may be necessary in the areas of payments and tax reporting.
Every situation is unique, but we generally recommend waiting until a date between March 1 and March 15 to submit the electronic file to the IRS. That way, individual forms can be revised without needing to submit a “corrected return” to the IRS. When corrections are made to an individual form before the electronic file is sent to the IRS, technically speaking, it is not a “corrected return.” That label is only used after the initial tax reporting information has already been supplied to the IRS.
Meet the New Form 8283
In December, the IRS issued a revised Form 8283, Noncash Charitable Contributions. The only substantive change is to the “Attachment Sequence No.” at the top of page 1. The old Attachment Sequence Number was 155, and now it is 36.
You’ve probably never pondered the IRS’s Attachment Sequence Numbers. They simply provide the order in which the taxpayer is supposed to attach forms to their 1040. Violating the Attachment Sequence can delay processing. There’s no reason to believe changing the Sequence number from 155 to 36 implies a higher level of scrutiny on Forms 8283.
Interestingly, the only other change was hyphenating the word “non-cash” where it appears in the fourth line of text. However, the unhyphenated “noncash” remains throughout the rest of the Form … including the headline! So much for consistency.
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