The Tax Law of Charitable Giving. Bruce R. Hopkins

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The Tax Law of Charitable Giving - Bruce R. Hopkins


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We believe the public accepts them as fair.39

      The literature on this subject is extensive. The contemporary versions of it are traceable to 1975, when the public policy rationale was reexamined and reaffirmed by the Commission on Private Philanthropy and Public Needs (informally known as the Filer Commission). The Commission observed:

      The practice of attending to community needs outside of government has profoundly shaped American society and its institutional framework. While in most other countries, major social institutions such as universities, hospitals, schools, libraries, museums and social welfare agencies are state-run and state-funded, in the United States many of the same organizations are privately controlled and voluntarily supported. The institutional landscape of America is, in fact, teeming with nongovernmental, noncommercial organizations, all the way from some of the world's leading educational and cultural institutions to local garden clubs, from politically powerful national associations to block associations—literally millions of groups in all. This vast and varied array is, and has long been widely recognized as, part of the very fabric of American life. It reflects a national belief in the philosophy of pluralism and in the profound importance to society of individual initiative.

      Underpinning the virtual omnipresence of voluntary organizations, and a form of individual initiative in its own right, is the practice—in the case of many Americans, the deeply ingrained habit—of philanthropy, of private giving, which provides the resource base for voluntary organizations.

      Here, the concept of philanthropy enters, with the view that charitable organizations, maintained by tax exemption and nurtured by an ongoing flow of deductible contributions, reflect the American philosophy that not all policy making and problem solving should be reposed in the governmental sector. Earlier, a jurist wrote, in a frequently cited article, that philanthropy

      A component part of the public policy doctrine is its emphasis on voluntarism. This principle was expressed as follows: