Why is it immoral to donate to charity with the sole motive to receive a tax deduction?
May 6th, 2010I’m writing a morality paper and need some support for why it’s immoral to only donate to charity because you want to get the tax deduction.
THANKS!
Replys
If someone is donating to charity to benefit himself, then he is taking advantage of the misfortune of someone else for personal gain. Thus, it is likely the person not only has no intention of helping the other person’s situation improve, but would also prefer that person to stay in such a condition as to allow the exploitation to continue.
That depends on your definition of morality. The tax credit isn’t worth as much as you spend in the donation, so you’re still losing some money there. Donating money to charity is usually seen as a moral good. Does the motivation behind the action change the morality of it?
Doesn’t work. Give $100 to a charity, and you only get to deduct between $10 and $45 total. You are cash-poorer by between $55 and $90. So clearly you DO care about the charity, quite a lot!
There’s only one case I can think of where a charity believed it was immoral to think of the tax consequences. This is the Vipassana group, which teaches enlightened consciousness free of distractions, needs, desires, craving, aversion or ignorance. It’s not a religion but is simply a school for those seeking enlightenment. Very useful training.
They consider the pursuit of a tax deduction to be a craving, and since craving is what they seek to eradicate, they do not want their students motivated by it.
I helped set up a new teaching center, and the more experienced students said "No no, we should not incorporate as a charity, because we do not want our students driven by craving a tax deduction." And I said "The purpose of the tax deduction is not to induce craving. That is simply how the government supports charities in the United States." In the UK, donations are not tax deductible, but the government goes to the charity and matches the donations they receive, so it’s the same net effect. Without the craving, apparently!
The other thing is, many donors nowadays use a Donor Advised Fund, or DAF. This is an "intermediary charity" — you take the tax deduction when you donate to the DAF. The DAF invests the money so it grows. Then later, when you decide to give to charity, you tell the DAF to give money to that charity. You get no benefit for doing this, since you took the deduction previously and separate from your decision to support a charity. This also solves the "craving the tax deduction" problem.
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