There are portions of what schools are doing here which are perfectly normal. There are portions which may not be (I imagine public funding may preclude certain admittance options, but I'm not sure). If the school is willing to put up with now the public perceives these actions and how it affects their business (because it is a business), then that's their decision.
My intent was to demonstrate that whatever is going on is hush hush for a reason, and not comparable to a legitimate transaction where a private business owner chooses to sell a product or service to someone at whatever price the two agree upon.
I would say that every donation carries with it the possibility of some benefit to the donator, no matter who does it. There's always the public relations or social benefit or being seen as "doing a good thing". Without this benefit, some amount charity might go away. Does it matter that people or organizations give because they see benefit to themselves in it? I think not, and I think the tax law is set up specifically to turn a blind eye to this. In that respect, it's not fraud at all, it's how the system is designed to work to promote charitable giving.
Also, since to my understanding most of this "advertising" for donations which results in naming a building is to individuals, it also depends on how you classify advertising. Is establishing a legacy for yourself so you're looked on favorably after you're dead advertising? We generally don't call it as such, but even it is, so what? Does is promote more good or harm to society in general? That's the only metric we should measure it by.
What if it's a hospital or clinic in an area? Are those people being stolen from or left worse off for it being possible in their area because someone gets their name there?
I can't help but feel you're being both far too pedantic in wanting to prosecute a crime that doesn't seem to actually hurt anyone (and actually benefits large groups and communities), and also completely misidentifying it as a crime when it's allowed by tax law.
I mean, at least part of the purpose of the law is to encourage people to give their wealth for the good of society by encouraging additional benefits (write-offs) in addition to the benefits that have always existed (recognition), so all I see here is a system functioning as designed, for the good of all. I'm not sure how you're seeing some great miscarriage of justice here.
The simplest argument, however, is that the purpose of taxes is to provide the services that a society wants, theoretically indicated by the way it votes. The services and products that the taxes buy should benefit everyone in the nation. If the country has a budget of $x and needs to levy a tax of $y (obviously must be calibrated to ability of one to pay), then why are we allowing adjustments to this?
Why open up the door to abuse? If you want to donate, then donate, what difference does that make to the money needed for government expenditures? The fact that we would even need a donation to a hospital is indicative of a broken system.
The end result of the tax deduction is that we have abuses, and we now have to spend more resources to police the abuses. And the only way to stop the abuses is to close the loophole that allows it.
All of the complexity of the tax laws simply enable more and more corruption. We should be aiming for transparency and simplicity, and instead we end up playing this "steal or be stolen from" game where you try to suck more out of it (but don't make it obvious) than you put in. How does donating millions to Harvard or an art museum benefit society? And even if it did, why would we want to give up our democracy's power to democratically spend the tax receipts the way we want, and instead give that power to a single person to spend however they want?
The reason you're having trouble identifying who is hurt in this case is because very, very few are, but the people who benefit are generally a large group.
In the worst case of the story in question, if someone donated a large amount to a school and their child was given preferential treatment, the loser is possibly a child whose spot is taken, but the beneficiaries are all the other students of the school, and possibly an additional amount of future (or current) students that would not have been able to attend, if those funds are used to allow more applicants.
> The simplest argument, however, is that the purpose of taxes is to provide the services that a society wants
This is a tax program used to incentivize trade of non-traditional goods, and trade generally benefits all involved. What we have are people that are not benefiting society in a way they could (people saving money that's not being put to use in the economy, but specifically more so than needed to safeguard their safety or way of life), and a program to incentivize them to use it in exchange for goods they desire (recognition, genuine altruism) but might need a push to pursue. That push is the government subsidization of the transaction to some degree.
As subsidies go, encouraging wealthy individuals to give money to causes that have to prove they aren't doing it for profit is probably my favorite. Sure, it can be abused by unscrupulous individuals or organizations on both ends, but I'm confident the social good achieved (over people just hoarding wealth longer) far outweighs the negatives.
> All of the complexity of the tax laws simply enable more and more corruption.
Non-profit deductions are simple. You'll have to do much more to convince me that a few anecdotal misuses outweigh what I see as one of the major causes of redistribution of wealth from the wealthy to the less wealthy over many decades.
The pragmatic approach is to attempt to measure who is hurt and by how much, and who is helped and by how much, before making an ultimate decision on whether this is good or bad. I doubt keying off anecdotal media stories about misuse of a tax law will yield better results than that.
> So, to recap, paying someone to steal my car is bad, but paying me to give you my car is fine. Got it.