Meta-proposal: Research what would be the consequences of implementing the proposal.
Proposal: Give the ability to citizens to decide where X% (say 2%) of their tax goes directly (it can be a charity or a government program)
Details: Of course, government can rebalance the rest of its budget in such a way that there’s no counterfactual changes. But maybe it would still make a change. If not, then maybe the X% has to go to a charity. Or maybe the donations could be made for more specific governmental projects.
Reasoning: Maybe individuals have specific insights that the government doesn’t have when it comes to public good, but altruism aside, individuals don’t have an incentive to finance public goods. Empowering citizens to directly decide where part of their taxes goes would help with that.
Extra: Mayyybe their could be a way to certified some charities as efficient, but that’s dangerous of going full circle, and having the government once again making the decisions, but their might be some in-between that would be superior. Maybe there should be a restriction to charities working on public good.
Thought on impact: Maybe philanthropists would give X% less to charities given they would have this mechanism to direct money to charities they want to support. If that’s true, then increasing income taxes by X% would sort of be going full circle, except now everyone would be giving X% to charity.
Name: Calling it the “philanthropy tax” might confuse the concept with “taxing philanthropy”. I’m definitely open to hearing other suggestions for names.
Update: Not surprisingly, other people have had similar ideas. For example, see Robert Lee’s Facebook post.
Philanthropy tax / Giving your 2 percents
Meta-proposal: Research what would be the consequences of implementing the proposal.
Proposal: Give the ability to citizens to decide where X% (say 2%) of their tax goes directly (it can be a charity or a government program)
Details: Of course, government can rebalance the rest of its budget in such a way that there’s no counterfactual changes. But maybe it would still make a change. If not, then maybe the X% has to go to a charity. Or maybe the donations could be made for more specific governmental projects.
Reasoning: Maybe individuals have specific insights that the government doesn’t have when it comes to public good, but altruism aside, individuals don’t have an incentive to finance public goods. Empowering citizens to directly decide where part of their taxes goes would help with that.
Extra: Mayyybe their could be a way to certified some charities as efficient, but that’s dangerous of going full circle, and having the government once again making the decisions, but their might be some in-between that would be superior. Maybe there should be a restriction to charities working on public good.
Thought on impact: Maybe philanthropists would give X% less to charities given they would have this mechanism to direct money to charities they want to support. If that’s true, then increasing income taxes by X% would sort of be going full circle, except now everyone would be giving X% to charity.
Name: Calling it the “philanthropy tax” might confuse the concept with “taxing philanthropy”. I’m definitely open to hearing other suggestions for names.
Update: Not surprisingly, other people have had similar ideas. For example, see Robert Lee’s Facebook post.