Just Giving by Rob Reich

Author:Rob Reich [Rob Reich]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Conclusion

Though people have engaged in philanthropy for millennia, the practice of giving money away has only recently become a tax-subsidized activity. Philanthropy is now embedded within a framework of public policies, many centered on the tax regime, that structures its practice and alters its shape from what it would otherwise be without the state’s intervention. Though nearly all liberal democracies have tax incentives for charitable donations, the justification for this practice is not well understood or theorized. I have canvassed three distinct justifications for providing tax incentives for philanthropy: a tax base rationale, an efficiency rationale, and a pluralism rationale. While I find nothing to recommend the tax base rationale, the efficiency and pluralism rationales do offer potentially good reasons to support subsidies for philanthropy. Neither of these latter two justifications, however, provides support for the actual design of most tax-subsidized giving, where a wide array of eligible recipient organizations and a tax deduction for giving are the favored mechanisms. A political theory of philanthropy might offer a defense, or several distinct defenses, of state incentives for giving money away, but the current practice of state-supported philanthropy, especially in the United States, is indefensible.

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