Quote:
Originally Posted by The Yen Man
But isn't that the whole point of giving tax breaks to charities? To encourage rich people to donate part of their money to charity? Does it matter what motives these wealthy people have as long as the money ends up being for charitable purposes?
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Again, it's not a problem of giving tax breaks to charities, that is separate from giving tax breaks for donations to those charities. The charity doesn't have to pay tax on a donation regardless of who or where it comes from, or how much it is. But the donor is also getting a tax break for their donation, which is the incentive you're talking about.
I'm not saying donors shouldn't get tax breaks, but when you're talking about sheltering billions of dollars from tax, that is a substantial amount. And the issue here is (I'd have too look deeper, I may be wrong here), it's going into a private, tax-exempt corporation and not necessarily to charities. It seems as though as long as he can show the funds are going to endeavors that promote "progress", he can use it for whatever he wants. My guess is he donates a lot of it, but it seems like he's more interested in setting up his own charities and organizations to do their own work, rather than writing a big cheque to Breast Cancer America (or whatever). Again, this is not necessarily bad, it's likely that Zuckerberg and his resources can do a lot more good this way, but that remains to be seen. As of now, he's just sheltered about bunch of dough from tax.