Terry Mitchell

Obama's Tax Policies Could Hurt Charities



Posted: Wednesday, March 04, 2009

by Terry Mitchell
http://commenterry.blogs.com

As a part of his fiscal year 2010 budget proposal, President Barack Obama plans to limit charitable donation deductions for those making more than $250,000 a year. Obama may want to rethink this provision. It is likely to bring with it some unintended consequences.

Due to the poor economy, charities are already hurting. Many of the middle-class folks who have been their most generous supporters in the past can no longer afford to give at the same levels they previously have.

Fortunately, the most affluent among us have generally not had to cut back on their charitable giving. Even though many wealthy people have lost large sums of money as a result of this recession, they still have plenty to spare. And charitable donations have always been a good tax shelter for them.

But now, things could be about to change. What? Will the new tax rules really affect how much the well-off give to charity? Well, duh! One would have to be naïve to believe these people will not reduce the amount of money they give to charity if they can't deduct as much of it from their taxable income as they have in the past. More than likely, many charities that have been around for decades would then have to shut down. What will be the response from Obama and his fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill then?
 
Terry Mitchell is a software engineer, freelance writer, amateur political analyst, and blogger from Virginia, USA. He posts a least one article a day to his blog - http://commenterry.blogs.com - on subjects such as current events, politics, technology, society and culture, religion, health and well-being, self improvement, personal finance, trivia, and sports. He is also the owner of a new privacy-enhanced search engine - http://www.SearchMost.com.

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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)
» left by Anonymous 3 years 65 days ago.
You should retitle your article. Obama's tax policies WILL hurt charities. There is nothing unintended about this. Obama WANTS people to give less, so charities will get less. This means fewer people will get private help, so more will "need" the only "resource" left - government. More people will depend on government, making Obama's dream of a socialist country easier to sell to the country. Do you really think Obama doesn't see this? Of course he sees it. He is the one doing it. I hope you like socialism.
» left by Linda DeWitt
 3 years 64 days ago.
67 fans. Follow Linda DeWitt on twitter!
Very interesting article. Thank you, Linda D
» left by Terry Mitchell 3 years 64 days ago.
91 fans.
Linda, thanks for reading and commenting.
» left by Nancy Daniels
 3 years 63 days ago.
Terry,
 
You are so correct.  What is interesting is that those people who are the most charitable (not necessarily giving the most moneys) are actually the churchgoers who tend to be found more predominantly in the red states.  While those moneys will certainly decrease to some degree, I agree with you that the wealthy will dramatically lessen their donations because of what the President is planning.  And that is where the real pain will occur.
 
Thank you for sharing,
 
Nancy
» left by Terry Mitchell 3 years 63 days ago.
91 fans.
Nancy, thanks for reading and commenting (And I'm not just saying that because you agree with me).
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