With recent news of a devastating typhoon in the Philippines, major earthquake in Indonesia, tsunami in the American Samoa, and flooding in Atlanta... many Americans feel compelled to help.  What can you do?

If you are Red Cross-certified to assist in emergency situations you may be pinged by the organization to assist in relief efforts.  However, more likely, physically participating in the relief efforts may not be feasible.  Then, there is donating your money.  At a time when the economy is weathering its own storm, you may feel like making a monetary donation is not an option.  But, it still might be. 

The IRS confers significant tax benefits for donations, making donating more palatable then you might have thought.  As outlined by Charity Navigator-- a national evaluator of charities-- here are 5 reasons why you may still be able to afford to donate:

If you waved the tax collectors by last April by filling a Form 4868 extension, you should know they will be coming by again on October 15th.  The six-month automatic extension comes due in just a few weeks. 

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• You have to pay interest on any 2008 tax that was not paid by April 15, 2009

Considering news that the unemployment rate went up in almost every state during May, or to be more specific, in 48 states plus D.C., there may be no better time to review some tax considerations in the context of losing a job.

Bob D. Scharin, Senior Tax Analyst for the Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters has some great tax tips for couples and families where one of the wage-earning spouses has lost their job. One of the tips was for income tax withholding, which is something that may be often-overlooked because people sometimes don't remember that their withholdings usually anticipate a full year's worth of earnings:

The estate of late billionaire hotelier Leona Helmsley has, at last, begun to be distributed. The New York Times has covered the ongoing dispute over how money in her charitable trust would be spent. According to a "mission statement" created by Helmsley years ago, the money was supposed to be used for the benefit of dogs. In the end however, as had been argued for by her trustees, only a small part of the amount doled out yesterday went to the care of dogs (a paltry $1 million out of the $136 million distributed), while the remainder went to medical centers.

People might wonder what would prompt Helmsley to use a trust in the first place, if as argued by the President of the Humane Society, it could possibly result in her "wishes ... clearly being subverted"? For Helmsley, a big part of the answer may have been as simple as "taxes".