| Election loser may win By Alan Feld | Friday, November 16, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Op-Ed Although he lost the election, Mitt Romney’s tax-cap proposal may be a rare bipartisan winner as Congress and the White House wrestle with how to avoid the fiscal cliff — which makes it useful to understand just who might gain and who might not under such a tax reform plan. ((...)) Taxpayers ... have discretion to determine how much they give to charity in any particular year. Studies show that the charitable contribution deduction operates as an additional incentive to give. Discovering you get no deduction for the amounts that you give because the cap has already filled up with your home interest and taxes eliminates that incentive and means that less money will flow to charity. And as charities rely heavily on the philanthropy of the wealthy, a deduction cap could reduce the flow of funds to worthy causes. |
| Michie ? +10 0 Eliminating the deduction on charitable donations could be devastating to some truly needy people. If there is no longer a deduction what would be the incentive for some of these charities to continue? I guess the "rich" would be exposed. The ones that were serious about charity would continue (at a much lower rate) and those that were doing it just for the deduction would slowly wind down until they disappear. Posted 10 hours ago ((11/16/2012 17:04)) |
It might cheer the peanut-gallery peanut up to think about what sort of charities an 'charities' the Fearless Funders of Freedumb an lesser richvolks actually go in for nowadays.
To say "The needy need not apply" would be an exaggeration, though probably we'll be getting to that eventually.
The trouble is (as Paddy McTammany diagnoses) that Ebb Scrooge, an Ollie Warbucks, an Mittius Coriolanus Pompo, an Messrs. les frères Koch, an most all The Classmates™ from sea to whinin sea do not wish their benefactions to be used against them. The world is so full of unprofitable thins to throw money at that, with only a modicum of care, their freelordships can be reasonably sure they are at least not subsidizin the Very Bad Poor, volks who will take whatever is available, handoutwise, and then ungratefullÿ go vote for "the Democrat Party."
Next come the Not-Quite-So-Bad (or nonvotin) Poor, of whom there are godzillions visible en masse, obviously, but with whom it is difficult to be quite sure about the whighteousness of any individual specimen. Their freelordships do not often simply hand out Fedguv Reserve notes in Spiro Agnew Brand (®) paper bags, of course; that old-fashioned plan would quickly get their freelordships' CPA's in trouble with Uncle Sam and Aunt Iris, whose pointy-headed bureaucrats get a big kick out of sayin NO to their predestined Betters. Unfortunately there are a lot of organizations out there who can pass themself off technically as Corporate Citizenesses of the non-profit subspecies but who, apart from ensuring that old Ebb, an young Ollie, an all The Classmates in between get their larceny mitigation, might as well be paper bags, handing out the boodle indiscriminately. On the basis of 'need', that is, need as unilaterally and preemptively evaluated by nonprofiteers from a nonprofitarian perspective quite alien to holders of M.B.A. degrees from the H*rv*rd Victory School and lesser seminaries of Mammon.
Not bein TOTAL boobs, Ebb an Ollie an Coriolanus Pompo an the gang are more an more takin self-protective an Class-protective countermeasures. Of these the three best ways to make sure one's handouts fall into the whight hands are as follows:
(A) to give by way of institutions of dogmatic mythology. This plan will work better for Coriolanus Pompo of Deseret than for most of The Classmates. Romans, in particular, must watch out that wild-eyed "preferable-option" Jesuits and similar theol@@ns do not accidentally get funded. (To insist on a preferable option of one's own for LOCAL institutions of dogmatic mythology ought to do the trick, ¿no es verdad?)
(B) Of the old-fashioned secular Wunnerbread charitier, so to call em, the ones that Ozzie an Harriet used to give to back before the whole world went bananas, the best bet (from a 2012 freelordly perspective) is Dread Diseases. Hopefully the ultimate recipients will not soon be so fully recovered as to go out to the polls any time soon. Even if they do, though, Ebb an Ollie an Coriolanus Pompo can reflect that (most) D. D.'s are quite as likely to befall noble Dives as that bum Lazarus. There may be a good deal more "collateral benefit" than their freelordships would ideally prefer, but what's in curin cancer, potentially, for Number One is plain enough.
(C) The cuttin edge of neocharity appears to be the Warrior Community, formerly known as 'veterans'. Bein themselves either flat-out chickenhawks or, in far smaller numbers, members of the WhightGuard Officers Mess, their freelordships perhaps overestimate the propensity of other ranks to vote whight, but if that be a mistake, it is at least a mistake that nearly everybooby makes. Probably not a mistake at all: given that their freelordships have to channel their selfgenerosity through some sort of formal organization or risk not gettin the deduction, the W.C. really is probably the best available philanthropic specuvestment this side of Salt Lake City.
A carper might carp that givin mostly to Warriors wanders quite a long way from need-basin, inasamuch as The Wicked State does an awful lot of it with the VA and whatnot.
This consideration, sound enough in itself, cuts both ways, it seems to Paddy. In fact Ol Ebb an young Ollie an Coriolanus Pompo could be said to "hit the trifecta" here, by one single coup of specuvestment obtainin (1) the deduction, (2) a strong positive balance of electoral support from beneficiaries, an (3) a chance to prove yet again that anythin Sam and Iris can do, the Secret Sector can do better.
In fact, Warrior boostin is so nifty a plan that one is slightly amazed that their freelordships did not think of it many years ago.
(( Q. ¿Can it be that the HVS M.B.A. is overrated? A. ¡No, of course not! ))
Happy days.
P.S. None of the above has very much to do with the 'reform' Party Neocomrade (sixth grade) A. L. Feld ("¿Quién?") was scribblin bout Paddy and Eye were just following Mister Poster as he jumped the track, though, so don't blame US.
The Fehrnstrom Fishwrap really shoulda told us who this freelordship is, namely
| Alan L. Feld Maurice Poch Faculty Research Scholar Professor of Law B.A., magna cum laude, Columbia University J.D., cum laude, Harvard Law School Interests: tax law; corporate law; law and the arts; nonprofit organizations; energy law and policy |
The Pooh Perfesser is but one of an amazin horde of (soundly whightist) Tertiary Educationalisers whom the Fishwrap started trottin out about ten minutes after Senator Fehrnstrom's re-election gee-hod miscarried. Kindermeister von Wolf's credentials are functionally indistinguishable from those of Senator-Elect Fauxchahontas -- an, for that matter, even closer to those of Barák Husâyn O'Bàma, POTUS of us all.
But Wally Wombschool an Cindy from Wasilla probably would not have noticed even if their Party organ had identified his freelordship properly at the bottom of his piece. 'Tis not the sort of piece, after all, that most selfservative kiddies are likely to make it to the bottomline of.
