The Nonprofit Quarterly | @npquarterly | Occupy the Charitable Tax Deduction

The Nonprofit Quarterly | @npquarterly | Occupy the Charitable Tax Deduction: Stung, I retreated to my computer, where I spent more than a hundred hours reading research papers, reports from the Joint Committee on Taxation, Office of Management and Budget, Giving USA, Harvard and Boston College Law School journals, Tax Notes, Tax Policy Center, and the Council on Taxes and Philanthropy, among others.

I emerged with a section of the tax code that handcuffs nonprofit organizations from advocating for the very constituencies they were created to serve; costs more than $30 billion a year; is available only to the wealthy; is subject to pervasive abuses that cost even more billions; just might be at least technically unconstitutional under provisions of the First Amendment; and, to top it all off, has never been able to demonstrate that it accomplishes the primary purpose for which it was created.

This is the charitable tax deduction.