I never understood why people keep pointing out that charity donations "might" qualify as tax brakes, as if that's something bad or even worse - some way to cheat the system. Can someone explain this to me?
As far as I understand - by donating X amount of money, the most you can possibly get, is an X deduction from your taxes. But the total amount of money spent at the end is still X. You haven't saved anything anywhere. You have sort of re-routed your taxes from the government to someone else.
The only way I can see fraud in this is when people set up a charity owned by themselves, then donate money to it and simultaneously have it as a tax deduction - that's just fraud. But I still don't see what's wrong with simply getting a tax break for donating - it doesn't save you anything, in fact, it's an added hassle at your tax return time(if you live somewhere where you have to do those at all).
If you buy X you pay tax.
If you donate to provider of X and get X in return as a gift you don't pay tax.
For example donating money to keep your local church running is paying for a service without paying taxes for it.
Another thing you can do is donate earmarked money that they will use to buy your products. For example Google donating chromebooks to schools. That is marketing dollars.
I didn't say it was "bad", I just classified it at the bottom of parent's list in terms of selflessness. I'm arguing that when you get the money back in tax it's less selfless than the other donation scenarios mentioned.
There's definitely an argument to be made about whether or not it's better for an individual to choose how to spend their tax dollars rather than a countries people to decide. It's definitely less democratic (I can't see how you can debate this), but I'm not sure the good of it is clear cut... That being said, as the class gap increases, individuals choosing how to spend a large portion of their taxes contributes to a concentration of power in the upper caste.
Libertarians seem to think that taxes and charity donations are two equally valid (but not necessarily equally effective) ways to help your community. They feel like they have a choice to assign a portion of their wealth to either. Oftentimes, they also believe that charity will be a more effective approach by bypassing the bureaucracy of the state.
Some people believe that taxes are the primary way to implement solidarity among citizens of a state. I believe that they are correct. Charity comes only second, and should in no way impact taxes. Charity, although a beautiful thing, is fundamentally in-egalitarian: it is not benefiting the Republic as a whole, but only a fraction of people who are in need, and typically fulfill certain criteria (e.g., being Christian, living in a given area, etc.). In most cases, charity targets very specific needs and people that are seen by the wealthy as being worthy of their help. It has a fundamental flaw insofar it keeps the power of wealth allocation to the wealthy.
Notwithstanding corruption and aggressive lobbyism, taxes are much more egalitarian and democratic.
> 10. When the donation gives you favors in return.
What if the "favor in return" is a reward after death? For a lot of people of faith, their motivation to donate is often post-resurrection reward... (The Bible is fairly against this attitude though. As Jesus for instance says "But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing" -- https://www.bible.com/bible/59/MAT.6.3.ESV ; and the general message seems to be that everything you have is a gift from God, so you're actually only just giving away what you've been gifted.)
Even though I disagree with the candidate for office. It may be legal and technically not a bribe, but it does have a really bad stench and is arguably one of the reasons why US politics are so fucked up.
Not sure why you're being downvoted, you actually do have a good point... I guess people are uncomfortable with directly acknowledging that social programs are funded by "donations" that are taken by force (i.e. taxes).
They're taxes, period. There's no moral benefit to paying them in the same way there's no moral benefit to obeying traffic laws. It's not a charity as it's not voluntary. It's the cost of playing the game.
I would argue there is a moral obligation to obeying traffic laws.
Historically, most societies considered maintaining social order as a moral obligation. Guest Rights and Obligations etc seem to disappear as society and governments became more effective. That’s somehow translated into the idea that not paying taxes is somehow perfectly ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospitium
"Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery, but of liberty. It denotes that he is subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master."
It’s the cost for some. If you’re rich enough you pay far less tax because you have access to an army of people whose job it is to help you do that. They leave us suckers to pay.
That’s not right. I think more of people who pay their fair share. Feels like a moral issue for me.
Except that's not true at all. Vast majority of taxes come from the richest. They might pay less percentage wise than me and you, but they pay the most in absolute terms.
>>I think more of people who pay their fair share.
I think more of people who pay more tax, not of those who pay more percentage wise. Ie - someone who makes a million dollars and pays 100k in tax seems to be contributing far more to the system than someone who makes 20k and pays 4k in taxes - even though the second person paid more percentage wise. Which one of these is "a fair share"? Why is one person literally paying 25x as much in taxes? Do they use the roads and hospitals and prisons and the police 25x as much?
I mean, I can see both sides of this argument - but I do dislike when people just go "oh us suckers down here are paying all the taxes" - like, no, we just don't.
That’s far from accurate. Income taxes contribute ~$1.932 trillion, but payroll taxes add $1.373 trillion and are often ignored in these calculations. As social security is capped at relatively low income levels the tax burden on the rich is much lower than often suggested.
Further, the often quoted top 1% is hardly the rich in the US, if you compare the income vs taxes paid of the top 0.01% their paying a lower percentage of their income than the average programmer in federal taxes. State taxes have a similar breakdown with property taxes, fuel taxes, etc representing a vastly lower burden for the 0.01% of income earners.
This is further compounded when you consider tax free wealth accumulation of capital gains where taxing in sale mean zero tax on possibly decades of income, or possibly ever. You don’t deduct charitable donations from social security taxes.
PS: As to what the rich receive in taxes. They receive a functioning society which is economically worth far more to themselves than lower income earners.
CBO did an analysis of household income, all federal taxes paid, and transfers and services. On a net basis, the top 40% pay for everything at all levels of government. The bottom 40% pay for only a portion of what it takes to keep themselves alive. The middle 20% splits between the two groups, but the portion that are net payers, pay very little.
> They receive a functioning society which is economically worth far more to themselves than lower income earners.
This is not obvious. Historically, the lower classes have very little rights and are subjected to oppressive behaviors from the kings and nobles and other well to do.
That’s amazingly misleading, people receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits tend to have lower earnings than they did while working full time. Effectively, averaging people who pay lots of taxes and receive minimal benefits with others who are receiving massive benefits gives a very distorted view of what’s going on.
Similarly, lumping everyone in the top 40% with the Rich completely hides how little the rich pay by lumping them in with the highest effective tax rate groups.
PS: It gets even crazier than that when you consider Trump for example qualified as having zero income for multiple years.
Usually, yes, if you are paid like a normal employee. I'm jumping straight to the point that many people have an issue with - that once you're wealthy enough, you don't make most of your money through a salary, you make it through capital gains, dividends, and other financial tools that make your effective tax rate much lower than it would have been had you taken it as a salary.
In a huge oversimplification, let's say you're in UK and make £100k/year. If you take that as salary, you'll pay 20% tax on around £40k of it, then 40% tax on £50k, with the remaining £10k being tax free. On the other hand, if you open a limited company that makes £100k, well, you're only paying 10% corporation tax on any profits - but of course the way to play this game is to expense everything imaginable under the sun, so ideally you have close to zero profit at the end of the tax year. Yes, the money isn't "yours", it belongs to the company, but you can expense things like your rent, gas, electricity, "work meals" etc. Then take £10k salary from your own company which is within the tax-free allowance. Voila, in the eyes of someone external, you've made £100k but through "clever tricks" paid less than 10% tax on all of it. Of course most people don't realize that isn't not that simple, but things like this lead to very quick judgement.
It comes from the same pocket. The scale of charitable donations is usually inversely proportional to tax rates and redistribution in a country. When people are highly taxed in high redistribution countries, they feel less compelled to give directly since the state is doing it for them (in addition to having less disposable income).
Maybe there is also less need/causes to donate to if living in a high redistribution country (and yes proximity is important for a lot of people at least emotionally).
So wont private donations. I believe some forms of poverty are unavoidable if you want to have a free society (i am not saying I endorse either side). The country I live in has the rule you are not allowed to treat mentally ill people against their will (if they are considered harmless). There seems to be some evidence that quite a number end up homeless. So what can you do? Not realising being sick is one of the symptoms of some of these (treatable) diseases.
