in a person, or peoples, behavior, when the financial equations are fundamentally altered.
Like the ‘estimates’ of revenue income from increasing, massively, taxes on tobacco, to pay for any of a number of good sounding ideas. As if those who use tobacco products will willingly pay the increased cost, generating the ‘estimated’ revenue. And when, not if, the amount of users of said products buy less and, often as not, the revenue not only fails to meet ‘estimates’ but actually drops below previous amounts, the spending based on the ‘estimated’ increases aren’t tied to actually getting more revenue!
And the deficit grows.
And the people donating to charities, whatever the reason they do or do not, will be less when the tax advantage of doing so goes away.
It’s not an ‘estimate’, it’s a historical fact.
One which tax and spend types never, EVER take into account.
And the deficit grows, and grows and grows.

And the only thing I can come up with is the general liberal belief that ONLY government can solve problems. Charities are obvious and effective groups that prove their ideology wrong. So the only solution is to kill charities. After all, since only government can solve problems, there is no reason for charities to exist.

People shouldn’t decide which charities are desrving of donations – the government should.

…you can’t trust progressives with economics.

“But Mike, they should do it for the good of the less fortunate, not for a deduction!” Darn straight they should. Not going to argue them there.

But they forget something painfully obvious.

Not unlike one of your favorite things being on sale, the tax writeoff allows dollars spent on a particular goal (charitable giving, in this case) to go farther. The economic opportunity cost of giving up that money is lessened.

While this change in the tax rules is unlikely to make people seal up their wallets, it is very likely to have a negative effect on giving by a non-trivial amount (especially as income elasticity of charitable giving is usually thought of as being greater than 1). Just as charities, already hit by the downturn, are needing additional funding the most.

Silly me, I always was told Democrats were about helping the poor…

Would someone post a form letter or paragraph that we can copy and send?
Charities are already hurting as far as donations. What Bush did was wrong too, tying them in with government money but this is so sad too especially with people donating less these days.

By drying up funding for local charities…the Democrats can expect more people to turn to the federal government to fill the vacuum left behind by these ruined charities!

The “Big Tent” analogy isn’t the correct one…the correct one is a MAGNET…we need to be a MAGNET that draws these independents in who are sick and tired of what’s going on in Washington—Fred Thompson

If this type of legislation is accomplished it could/will also cut into the donations for such organizations as:

The Wounded Warriors Program

and,

The Special Operations Warrior Foundation
http://www.specialops.org/

Oh geezz….. with some of the logic on this page it’s clear people only give to get something in return. That’s one of the most selfish things I’ve heard lately.

So I guess that means that if I don’t want to pay for Social Security or welfare, I don’t *have* to?

Get back to me on that one, liberals.

According to the morning talk show here in the center of Obamaland today, he isn’t simply taking away from the charities by taxing them. He is then going to use federal money to support the missions of the charities, and he expects this money to offset any money they would lose to the rich losing the tax break. Now the morning talk show was focusing on whether or not this is Obama, self-identifying with undertrodden of his district being out to even the score. But if true, I think this single fact lays out in its starkest from the intentions of Obama: he intends to move power away from individuals and into government. In short, he wishes to reduce the citizenship to serfdom, although in an unguarded moment he would probably say he was working to finally free the proletariat from their constructed chains.

How many people give to charity JUST for the tax break? Let’s be honest, how many people are going to give $1,000 to charity just to save $350, and how much difference will it make if it’s to save $280 instead? I think not that much. I’m not defending Obama here, just pointing out the economic and fiscal sense that it makes or doesn’t make.

What will kill charity, though, is Obama’s punitive and confiscatory taxes on high earners who do give big bucks to charities. They’ll have less disposable income, so they’ll probably cut back on giving. Obama wants to take a government monopoly on charity the same way it already does education.

First there is pressure if your are poor to sign up for government programs. There is this mindset of the parent is negligent if a parent doesn’t sign up for some type of public assistance they are elgible for. This ranges from public schooling, school lunches, mediciad, food stamps, WIC, etc. The mindset of we will be either pay cash or do without is just foreign to people.

Secondly the state automaticaly signs applicants up for benefits they did not apply for if they apply for one type of assistance. I’ve had this experience first hand mulitple times. For example when I applied for food stamps, we were automatically signed up or medicaid without being asked first. Recieving medicaid basically gives the state decision making for your child’s health. I don’t understand why republicans are always for expanding medicaid, there are so many strings attatched to it. When I applied for TANF and food stamps in another state, we were automatically signed up for daycare subsidy. I didn’t need or want daycare.

Third, another thing that is done, is they do these kind of pilot programs on children in families recieving assistance first, and the parents are too busy or too precoccupied to notice. They present these programs as help, not as pilot studies. I will say to theri credit, when challenged they freely admit they believe parents have poor judgement and they know what is best for other peoples children, despite not having any kind of professional training or license! I think it’s all about money, not an ideology of we know best though. The programs seem to feed off of one another. Example, children are “tested” for learning disabilities, speech, behavioral problems, they are referred to another agency, they recieve therapy, they get money back from medicaid, etc, most of it seems to be way for gov paid workers to expand their client base. When the gov wants to expand this stuff to the middle class, we hear an outcry about it. The thing is they already have these studies and stuff done on the poor and have something to present to get it done in the mainstream.
The thing that is also dangerous is that much is done without professionals doing it. Like a daycare “teacher” with maybe not even a high school diploma, testing children for developmental delays or a volunteer with no medical training checking children’s vision.

From what I’ve seen I think eventually participation in public assistance will be mandatory eventually.

We should have a low, flat personal income tax of about 15% (10% once we can get a lot of government spending cut out of the budget and the debt paid down) – no deducations, no exceptions.

The charitable tax deduction is just another example of both how the tax code has become so complicated as well as a case-in-point as to how the tyranny of good intentions has a firm grip on unprincipled members of both parties.

Giving to a charitable organization in order to get a tax deduction may be something, but charitable it is not.

I have no doubt that Obama is promoting this because he believes that government should be the only federally-funded charity – and I heartily disagree only because I believe that there should be absolutely no federally-funded charities.

Illustration: Top bracket is going to 39.6%, so let’s use that bracket.

I donate $1000 to a charity, but with the deduction, it is only costing me $604. The government donates $396 of it by refunding it to me when I file my taxes up to a year later.

Now, since new deduction maxes at 28% bracket in BOs plan, to get $1000 in the charity’s hands, my net donation is $720 while now the government donates $280, instead of the the $396. Thus, I have to give more out of my own pocket for the charity to get the same amount of money.

So, how much does the charity lose? So, if I continue to give the same net amount from me, $604, I would donate $838.88 to the charity. My net cost is the same $604 as before, but the charity loses $161.12. Now, tell me this is really a humanitarian policy of the Obama Admin. It is Obamanomics at its best.

It is important to remember that we have to look at the person’s net donation, not the gross.

The only bright spot I see is that donations to liberal colleges like Harvard could go down.