maanantai 15. syyskuuta 2008

RE: Biden's Charity Aversion

This post is in English, since I am linking to Greg Mankiw's misleading comment about Joe Biden and his charity-giving.

Three explanations are possible:
  1. Biden is cheap and does not want to give money
  2. Biden gives cash to his local catholic church
  3. Biden thinks it is not right to claim tax deductions for charity, because that is just giving someone else's money away.
I am not an expert on the American tax system, but usually these deductibles are worth your marginal tax rate, i.e., if your marginal tax rate is 25, you get 25 cents on the dollar when you report it.

That is, compared to not giving, the taxman pays 25 per cent of your donation. Perhaps Biden thinks, liberal as he is, that the state has good use for this money and does not think other people should subsidize his charities.

UPDATE: Judging from the links to Mankiw's blog, concervatives have feasted upon this and not a single one has even considered this aspect. This blatant hypocrisy, double standards, etc. of the conservatives doesn't seem to bother anyone. And I am not surprised.

2 kommenttia:

Veli-Matti Partanen kirjoitti...

If Joe Biden felt wrong about making tax deductions shouldn't the charitable gifts be 0 dollars?

What's the point to deduct just a small amount?

Tiedemies kirjoitti...

I would not venture to guess at Biden's motivations. I simply pointed out that tex-deductible charity is also partly giving someone else's money (i.e., money you don't have unless you give it) away.

Perhaps Biden feels the the small amount was optimal in the sense that it struct the perfect balance between tax deductible charities and whatever it was that he gave and didn't report. (could be zero, I am just saying)

American conservatism is dishonest at the core of it. So is the liberal agenda at large, but less so.