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I agree with your point, but as a small note, the IRS limits the tax deduction for charitable donations to half of your adjusted gross income (AGI), or even low
by areyousure 10y ago
I agree with your point, but as a small note, the IRS limits the tax deduction for charitable donations to half of your adjusted gross income (AGI), or even lower. This is particularly relevant to people like Warren Buffett, who last year gave away 250 times more than his AGI (according to numbers he released earlier this year). He still paid taxes.
- jacobr1 10y agoIt is a bit more complicated to that. If you gift appreciated assets rather than cash, you can avoid the capital gains tax, but still can deduct the full current market value (up to the limit).
- smsm42 10y agoWell, OK, it was an imaginary example of course so yes, there are limits, but the point is when comparing tax rates as to how "fair" they are it is completely pointless if one forgets the charity donations. The outcome becomes completely wrong.
- maxerickson 10y ago"fair" without some specific discussion of a viewpoint is always pointless. Is it somehow objectively fair that Romney can give an extra ~$1.3 million dollars to some cause other than the US government? Of course not. (I don't think it is the largest problem with the tax code, but I'm not real certain it is a good thing, the rules for determining whether a charity qualifies to receive deductible contributions effectively add a lot of complexity to the tax code)