Charitable Contribution Carryover Worksheet: AGI Limits and 5-Year Window

The charitable contribution carryover worksheet is the tool in IRS Publication 526 that tracks the portion of your donations that exceeded the annual AGI percentage limits, so you can deduct the leftover amount on a future return. Worksheet 2 in Publication 526 (“Applying the Deduction Limits”) walks you through each category of gift, applies the correct percentage cap, and ends each category with a line for the excess that becomes your carryover.¹

One detail to flag before you start: Worksheet 2 is built to calculate a carryover generated in the current year. If you’re also applying a carryover from a prior year, you have additional calculations to run that combine the old balance with this year’s contributions. The amount you end up deducting from a prior-year carryover flows to Line 13 of Schedule A (Form 1040).²

The AGI Limits the Worksheet Applies

A carryover exists because the IRS caps how much of your giving you can deduct in one year, based on a percentage of your adjusted gross income. The cap depends on what you gave and who received it. The worksheet separates your contributions into these buckets:

60% of AGI: Cash contributions to public charities such as churches, hospitals, and schools.³
50% of AGI: Non-cash property donations to public charities, other than appreciated capital gain property deducted at fair market value.³
30% of AGI: Appreciated capital gain property (such as stock held over a year or real estate) donated to public charities at fair market value. Cash and non-capital-gain-property donations to private non-operating foundations also fall under this 30% limit.³
20% of AGI: Appreciated capital gain property donated to private non-operating foundations.⁴

These limits stack in order. The worksheet applies 60% cash contributions first; whatever AGI room remains gets consumed by the 50% category, then 30%, then 20%. Any amount left over after a category runs through its cap becomes a carryover, and the carryover keeps the percentage tag of the category that generated it. A 30% carryover stays a 30% carryover in every future year you work the worksheet.¹

Working Through the Calculation

Start with your AGI for the donation year. Say your AGI is $400,000 and you gave $280,000 in cash to your alma mater. Your 60% cap is $240,000. You deduct $240,000 this year, and the remaining $40,000 lands on Worksheet 2’s carryover line for cash contributions subject to the 60% limit.¹

Add another gift in the same year: $150,000 of stock (basis $30,000) to a public charity. The stock is capital gain property, so your 30% cap is $120,000. But the cash gift already used $240,000 of your $400,000 AGI, and the 30% category can’t push your total deduction above the combined ceiling that applies when gifts fall under more than one limit. The worksheet handles those interactions line by line, trimming the room available for each later category based on what the earlier ones consumed. The $30,000 of stock value you couldn’t fit becomes a 30% carryover.

Applying a Prior-Year Carryover

When you bring a carryover into the current year, the key rule is that current-year gifts come first. You deduct everything you gave this year against the AGI caps, then apply the carryover against whatever room is left.¹

Recalculate the percentage limits using this year’s AGI, not the AGI from the year the original gift was made. A down year leaves less room than you may expect; a higher-income year opens more.

Here’s how it plays out. Suppose your 2026 AGI is $300,000 and you gave $100,000 in cash to a public charity this year. Your 60% cap is $180,000. After the $100,000 current-year gift, $80,000 of 60% room remains. If you’re carrying forward a $40,000 cash carryover from 2024, you can deduct the full $40,000 now. The carryover must match its original category: a 60% carryover takes remaining 60% room, a 30% carryover takes remaining 30% room, and so on.

If your current-year gifts fill a category entirely, no carryover in that category gets used. It rolls to the next year with its five-year clock still running.

Multiple Carryovers: Oldest First

When carryovers exist from more than one prior year, the IRS requires you to use the oldest before the newer. A $25,000 carryover from 2022 must be exhausted before you touch a $40,000 carryover from 2024.¹

The first-in, first-out order exists because older carryovers are closer to expiring. Each one has a five-year life from the donation year. A carryover from a 50% limit contribution made in 2022 must be used by the end of 2027, or the remainder expires.⁵

Track each year’s carryover separately on the worksheet. Even if two carryovers sit in the same percentage category, you can’t merge them, because each has its own remaining balance and its own expiration date. List each prior year on its own line so you apply them in the right order and see which balances are about to lapse.

An additional ordering rule: carryovers from gifts to public charities (50% limit organizations) are used before current-year gifts to private foundations and other organizations with lower percentage limits.¹

The Standard Deduction Trap

Here is the detail that catches people. If you take the standard deduction in a year when you have a carryover, the carryover still shrinks. Under IRS regulations, the balance is reduced by the amount you could have deducted had you itemized, even though you claimed nothing.⁵

Suppose you have a $50,000 carryover and your AGI limits would have allowed a $30,000 charitable deduction if you itemized. If you choose the standard deduction because it gives you a bigger overall break, the IRS still treats $30,000 of the carryover as used. Only $20,000 moves forward.

If your itemized deductions, including the carryover, would exceed the standard deduction, itemizing is almost always the better move. You get the actual tax benefit and you preserve the rest of the carryover. Run the numbers both ways before filing.

The Five-Year Expiration Window

You have five tax years after the donation year to use a carryover. A contribution made in 2024 that generates a carryover can be deducted through your 2029 return. After that, any unused portion is gone, with no extension and no way to recover it.⁵

Combined with the standard-deduction rule above, that clock can wear a carryover down faster than you expect. Every year counts whether you itemize or not. For a large carryover approaching expiration, moving current-year donations to a different year (to free up AGI room) or accelerating income can let more of the carryover be absorbed before it runs out.

One exception sits outside the five-year rule: carryovers from qualified conservation contributions, typically conservation easements, get a 15-year carryforward period.¹

Carryovers After Divorce or Death

Divorce

When a married couple with a joint carryover divorces and begins filing separately, the carryover does not simply split in half, except in community property states where equal allocation is the default. The regulations require the joint carryover to be allocated based on what each spouse’s separate carryover would have been if they had filed separately in the year the excess contribution was made.⁵

In practice, you look at whose income or property funded the donation, what each spouse’s separate AGI would have been, and what each spouse’s separate limit would have produced. If one spouse earned most of the income and made the entire donation, that spouse may be allocated most or all of the carryover. Getting this split wrong can mean one spouse claims a deduction they weren’t entitled to.

Death

A carryover allocable to a deceased spouse cannot be used in any year after the year of death. It can be claimed on the decedent’s final return or on a joint return for the year of death, and that’s it.⁵

A surviving spouse filing jointly in the year of death can still use the deceased spouse’s share on that final joint return. Starting the following year, that share is gone. The surviving spouse’s own share stays available under the normal five-year rules. Allocating each spouse’s share follows the same method used in divorce.

Records to Keep Alongside the Worksheet

Because a carryover spans multiple returns, your records need a longer life than usual. Keep at least the following:

Contemporaneous written acknowledgments from the charity for any single donation of $250 or more, received by the earlier of your filing date or the return due date including extensions.⁶
Form 8283 for non-cash gifts totaling over $500, filed with the return that first claims the deduction. Gifts over $5,000 also require a qualified appraisal and Section B of that form.⁷
The carryover worksheet from the year the excess was generated and from every subsequent year you applied a portion of it. These are your audit trail: they prove the original excess, the amounts used each year, and the remaining balance.
The qualified appraisal for any non-cash gift over $5,000. If the IRS questions the deduction in a later carryover year, you’ll need the original valuation.⁷

Hold these records for at least three years after filing the return on which you claim the last of the carryover. Since a carryover can run five years past the donation year, documentation for a large gift may need to survive eight years or more from the date you first wrote the check.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 526, Charitable Contributions
2
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Schedule A Form 1040
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 US Code 170 – Charitable, Etc., Contributions and Gifts
4
eCFR. 26 CFR 1.170A-8 – Limitations on Charitable Deductions by Individuals
5
eCFR. 26 CFR 1.170A-10 – Charitable Contributions Carryovers of Individuals
6
Internal Revenue Service. Charitable Contribution Deductions
7
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8283