If your aim is tax-deductibility, and there are charities that you can’t current get tax-deductibility to, then why not setup a charity that simply makes grants to overseas charities? This is what we have done in the UK with the Giving What We Can Trust, which has had hundreds of thousands of pounds donated through it to non-UK charities. This means that you can donate to any charity in the world rather than limiting yourself to Australian charities.
Turns out tax deductibility is much more complicated in Australia than elsewhere, and is made even worse by the fact that a couple of legal challenges are currently underway, so the case law is in flux.
There are a couple of people in Melbourne (not me!) who know their way around the tax system very well and are planning to write up the parts that would be relevant to setting up a re-routing fund. I think they’re not prioritising it because setting up such a fund looks like it would be at least 1 full time job, plus a decent amount of accounting/legal/senior-community-figure support.
Hi Niel—there are other people doing the trust idea :)
The aim of my group is mostly outreach—there are heaps of people interested in charity who want to give to effective Australian groups who aren’t EAs as such. (This is not something I personally agree with, but a large number of people do) so there’s a real need for some local guidelines.
If your aim is tax-deductibility, and there are charities that you can’t current get tax-deductibility to, then why not setup a charity that simply makes grants to overseas charities? This is what we have done in the UK with the Giving What We Can Trust, which has had hundreds of thousands of pounds donated through it to non-UK charities. This means that you can donate to any charity in the world rather than limiting yourself to Australian charities.
Turns out tax deductibility is much more complicated in Australia than elsewhere, and is made even worse by the fact that a couple of legal challenges are currently underway, so the case law is in flux.
There are a couple of people in Melbourne (not me!) who know their way around the tax system very well and are planning to write up the parts that would be relevant to setting up a re-routing fund. I think they’re not prioritising it because setting up such a fund looks like it would be at least 1 full time job, plus a decent amount of accounting/legal/senior-community-figure support.
Hi Niel—there are other people doing the trust idea :)
The aim of my group is mostly outreach—there are heaps of people interested in charity who want to give to effective Australian groups who aren’t EAs as such. (This is not something I personally agree with, but a large number of people do) so there’s a real need for some local guidelines.