Many charities are incredibly efficient; I'd argue instead for detailed scrutiny of the ones actually wasting money in overhead.

Apart from that, taxation already burns up a fair bit of people's goodwill; it's a lot harder to get people to donate when they're already involuntarily "donating" to a wide range of causes they don't support. A tax break for charitable donation gives people the ability to support causes they actually do support.

> Many charities are incredibly efficient; I'd argue instead for detailed scrutiny of the ones actually wasting money in overhead.

The ones that are incredibly efficient are the ones that deliver on their mission well for the amount of dollars that go into them; this may or may not correspond to a low share of money spent on administration.

In charities -- and the same is true for public agencies -- people love to complain about high administrative overhead, but then also love to turn around and complain when ineffective administrative oversight results in non-administrative uses of funds being wasteful or ineffective, asking why controls weren't in place to prevent that.

As soon as you start looking at outcomes you need to include charities that fund bad things. Many charities missions makes the world worse. Let's promote abstinence only education! Let's take the kids to the Intelligent Design Museum! Or for the religious, let's promote Atheism!

I absolutely agree. I wouldn't suggest a naive definition of "overhead" as "everything spent on administration"; a reasonable organization need some amount of administration, and "0 overhead" would be the sign of an unhealthy organization (or a passthrough shell).

gives people the ability to support causes they actually do support. By taking money from people who don't.

Further, overhead is only part of the problem. Many fund crap.

> By taking money from people who don't.

That's an incredibly entitled attitude (specifically, "entitled to other people's money"). Paying less in taxes is not equivalent to "taking money" from others. If you want to take less money from everyone, decrease taxes, or eliminate actual tax loopholes and deductions that don't provide a net good in the world (or serve any function at all other than rewarding those who bought and paid for them).

Paying less in taxes is equivalent to "taking money" from others either though increased debt or higher tax rates. Where would you suggest it comes from? Further, your sidestepping the crap argument. I get to vote in some small way on what the government spends money on, except this giant loophole for charities.

Let's setup a charity to lower the drinking age. I am sure we can get some donations from here and there.

> Paying less in taxes is equivalent to "taking money" from others either though increased debt or higher tax rates.

Not at all. Taking away a tax deduction is equivalent to raising taxes, and will do absolutely nothing to decrease taxes for anyone. Now, if you wanted to propose a bill that eliminates a tax deduction and simultaneously lowers the tax rate to keep it revenue-neutral, then at that point you could argue for the benefits of that tax cut. But a tax increase in any form defaults to becoming more revenue, and tax cuts occur separately. (I'd love to see those two things inherently connected by law, but that hasn't happened.)

Also, if you actually proposed that bill, opponents of it would reasonably ask, of all the sources you might use to fund your tax cut, why you decided to start by raiding charitable donations instead of a thousand different items in the "expenses" column. Do you really believe that, of all the possible ways to fund a tax cut, the most important would be to target charitable giving?

> Further, your sidestepping the crap argument.

If you think some charities shouldn't receive 501(c)3 status, I'd agree, and I'd argue for stricter review processes. If you think all charities shouldn't, then I invite you to make that argument to the general public and see how they respond to it.

> Taking away a tax deduction is equivalent to raising taxes

The burden (the cost source of the tax) exists. How the burden is served can leverage individual self-interest to create, maintain, or change behavior (tax deducations). A change in available cost sharing tactics (taking advantage of a burden reduction as it exists or does not) is not a change in the burden. It is not the same as raising taxes (ie tax rate).

I am not interested in stepping into how terminology between rates and fixed fees is confused across a multitude of localities.

> will do absolutely nothing to decrease taxes for anyone.

If you did absolutely nothing else it would reduce government debt. Which reduces future taxes.

Not directly, in the absence of an explicit tax cut. It should, but it doesn't.

I understand your position, and I'd actually favor a tax structure that has a much lower rate and almost no deductions (making everyone's taxes far simpler than even the one-page 1040-EZ, and completely automatic). That would leave people more than enough for charitable giving and many other things. But unless that comes as a package deal eliminating all deductions and lowering taxes accordingly, I wouldn't support eliminating a tax deduction for charitable giving while leaving the myriad other deductions.

It's not exactly a small change over time. There is ~350 billion in charitable giving in the US per year. If you assume that was taxed at say 20% on average and ignoring inflation or interest * 238 years that's 16.6 trillion or close to the national debt.

Of course our GDP and tax rates has grown over time, but not nearly as quickly as debt interest. So, without doing excessive analysis we would probably have a national surplus if literally nothing else changed in the tax code or spending.

Granted, arguments about lowered GDP and other knock on effects are reasonable. But, suggesting no long term tax breaks seems unlikely.