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'to his own charity' still involves not giving it away or not putting it outside of his control.
by celticninja 5y ago
'to his own charity' still involves not giving it away or not putting it outside of his control.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoThese "foundations" are very typical of rich people and politicians.
- DevKoala 5y agoAre you suggesting he is pocketing the money? The charities have to be regulated to qualify for the tax write off. The government inspect these institutions. For example, they forced the organization that posed as BLM since it was misusing the funds. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/politics/new-york-attorney-general-blm/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/politics/new-york-attorney-ge...
- gostsamo 5y agoIf your friends are controlling the charity, then they do with the money whatever you tell them to do. Also, you get tax credit for the donation and those money are substracted from your overall tax bill.
- dazc 5y agoI get a 19% tax credit for any money my business gives to charity. The other 81% is money I could have spent on something else or kept on the balance sheet.
- gostsamo 5y agoShould I send you an invoice for the accounting advice? https://www.wealthmanagement.com/estate-planning/charitable-trusts-doing-good-while-avoiding-tax-man https://www.wealthmanagement.com/estate-planning/charitable-...
- celticninja 5y agoNo I am not. I am saying that giving that money to a charity, where Musk or people closely related to him, decide how and where it is spent, is not as generous as it seems on paper. If, for example, it goes to a charity that employees family members and in part is used to pay their wages, then you might understand how he gives the money away but doesn't really give it away.
- pengaru 5y agoCharities are notorious for burning money on administrative overhead. I don't know about Musk's situation, but it's not exactly unheard of for wealthy folks requiring tax write-offs to have friends/family run charities they fund through deductible donations.
- dazc 5y agoCan you explain how I can give myself my own money for tax purposes then? I recently suffered a bit of interrogation from my own accountant for giving money to a registered charity that I have no involvement with so I'm sure she'd like to know about about this.
- smt88 5y agoDo you think your tax evasion options are similar to those of the wealthiest man in the world? I certainly hope your morals aren't similar. He has a long track record of daring regulators to come after him.
- dazc 5y agoFair point, it does irk me though when people just assume any charitable giving is some clever tax dodge that equates to a zero cost action on the part of the donor.
- celticninja 5y agoIf he donated $50k or $100k to am existing charity outside his control I would accept it. He is giving $5.7 billion to a charity, it would be foolish to assume that is going to a charity that he has zero influence over.