“Tax-free should be capped at some point. It’s laudable wealthy individuals leave their estates to charitable causes until we realize that taxpayers are matching one to one (almost) to their donation”
Not sure I follow this, how are taxpayers matching this one on one? While the amount that they donate would be involved with estate taxes (assuming it is high enough), the estate tax is not 100%. I don’t recall what the estate tax is, let’s say it is 10% to make it simple, if the guy donates 10 million to Harvard in his estate, the amount lost in taxes is 1 million, not 10 million, which in theory would have to be made up by the remaining taxpayers.
I do think that there are a lot of questions about tax free status across the board, not just charities, but things like 501c4 donations (the infamous ones supposedly used for supporting social causes, that ends up funding politically aimed campaigns). For example, if something that is tax free spends 90% of what they pull in on administration costs, executive directors, and fund raising, should that all be tax free? Should a university that is using endowed money to build a mansion for the head of the school, or a guest house for potential donors, be able to claim that as tax free? Should a football program that is pulling in 25 million + a year from tv revenue (not to mention other sources), be able to claim that is tax free income? There is something to be said for using tax policy as a carrot and stick, if a football program is paying its coach 7 million a year and collecting those kind of revenues, and that money is staying in the football program, maybe they should be taxed, whereas if the ‘excess’ money goes towards scholarships and such in the academic side, it would still be tax free.