A Deduction From Charity
25th March 2009
Martin Feldstein points out some inconvenient truths about alleged-smart-guy Obama’s plan to mutilate the charitable giving deduction.
In effect, the change would be a tax on the charities, reducing their receipts by a dollar for every dollar of extra revenue the government collects. It is hard to imagine a rationale for taxing schools, hospitals, medical research budgets and arts organizations in this way. I suspect that the administration officials who drafted this proposal did not understand that it would have this perverse effect.
Well, it’s not as if anybody in the Obama Nation has demonstrated any understanding of how money and the tax system actually work. For people with a lot of advanced degrees from spiffy upper-class institutions, these guys don’t give any appearance of being the sharpest knives in the drawer.