andy

Charity: The open palm. October 7, 2005

Posted by andy in : life , trackback

I’m rather fond of charities and I like donations. On my list of all-time best things ever, I think they’d rank pretty high.

But there was something that kinda irked me, and when I say it, you’re going to think I was nuts.

I used to think that getting tax-deductions for donating to a charity was lame. I didn’t want to be rewarded for my donation. It was my sacrifice and I didn’t want anything back for it. I felt that it in some way cheapened my donation and I didn’t want to claim it. I maintain that this was a reasonable position.

However…

I grew to understand that the tax break actually meant that I was actively diverting government money to the target of my choice. When the government is no longer collecting tax on the money that I donate to a charity, they are, effectively, donating to that charity at my marginal tax rate.

Quite generous really, and an excellent way of making sure that government money reaches the charities you support. It’s also a covert way of funding charities that would otherwise refuse funding from governments (Amnesty and Greenpeace to name but two).

But I had a new thought today, and it was brought on by reading a book that turned up in a place that I thought unlikely at the time: my grandfather’s house. One of the things left when he passed away last month was a copy of “Not Happy, John”, which is an excellent book on the sad state of democracy in Australia. It’s somewhat unfortunate that the title and cover of the book are quite partisan, as the message is not strictly an anti-Howard one, more one that politicians, of all faiths, can never be trusted. But anyway… I’ll discuss all that in a later post…

The thought I had was the next logical step from my previous one: Charitable donations can be wielded as an effective political protest.

I don’t mean that by giving money to your chosen NGO that they will lobby governments on your behalf, although that is most certainly true.

And I don’t mean that by giving money to that same NGO that you are sneakily getting the government to pay for them, although that is almost there and equally true.

What I mean is that you can take your money back. If you don’t like how government spends your money then you go and spend it yourself. They can’t have it. If they’re going to spend money attacking other sovereign nations (or not attacking enough other nations if you’re that way inclined) then they can’t have it. Take your ball and go home.

Basically I’d only ever thought of charitable donation as a proffered hand. A gift to a group doing work that I think is valuable.

Now I see that charity can also be used as a slap in the face. A punishment to any Autralian government that takes action in ways that I completely disapprove of.

I never really thought of it like that before, but now that I have, I feel ever-so-slightly more empowered as a citizen. I wish I’d thought of this sooner.

I’m going to start donating more money to charities.

Comments»

1. RodeoClown - October 7, 2005

I used to think the whole tax-break thing was stupid. I got Jen to change our sponsor kid to be in my name as well today though, so I can claim it on tax.

I realised the same kind of thing as you re:diverting money to the charity.

The problem is that taking money away from the govt isn’t going to stop the things you don’t like, it’s just going to take away from the things that ARE important. Gah! Stupid government that doesn’t do what I think it should.

(not that you shouldn’t give money to charities - that’s cool)

2. andy - October 7, 2005

No, it doesn’t stop the things that I don’t like. But it takes a little bit of money away from them. When John says that killing innocent civilians in Iraq cost X million dollars I can feel comfortable knowing that I tried not to contribute. That’s what a protest is. It’s standing up and saying no.

Of course they’ll try to do it anyway, governments always does things anyway (Howard’s does and Keating’s did before him). But sometimes they don’t get their way and, as citizens in a democracy it’s OUR responsibility to make sure that happens. This is one, albeit, small way.

Something else that can be done if you have feelings of guilt about getting money back from your donation is to donate it again. I think that’s a nice idea too.

(It’s cool that you sponsor a kid. I haven’t done that yet.)

3. thom - October 20, 2005

The only problem I can see with it as a form of protest, which in principle I totally agree with, is that the message will most likely get lost in the wash. There’s no spot on the tax return form for “I donated this much money to charity because I disagree with the following policies of the current government and furthermore, I wish to stick it to the man by making him cough up some of it. So there.” At least not last time I checked.

If we donate lots to charity and claim it back on our tax, I think the more likely scenario is the government thinking “hey, these middle income earning guys gave lots of money away this year, they must have too much, lets tax them some more, oh, and the low income earners too ’cause that’s just what we do” shortly followed by “hey lookie, a big fat budget surplus, lets give ourselves, the high income earners that is, a break, after all we deserve it … money fight!”

Deeply cynical? Moi? Never.

4. Treadmill - January 31, 2008