Do you have any more details on the opinions you’ve gotten from legal experts? I’d be interested in hearing more about the reasoning for why it’s okay.
I think Paul Christiano explained well here why it might be questionable:
If you make an agreement “I’ll do X if in exchange you do Y,” … Obviously the tax code will treat that differently than doing X without any expectation of reciprocity, and the treatment depends on Y. …
Thanks David. As Paul says, it certainly isn’t clear cut. We have had unofficial legal advice, but nothing formal. The general idea from the advice is that some of the laws say things on the lines of “You must not have received goods or services from the charity”—which is still true in the case of swapping. There is also no legal obligation for your matched donor to donate to the charity you want them to donate to, and that is apparently significant. Also the tax rebate isn’t dependent on WHY you chose the charity that you donated to. If the website proves to be popular we will look into getting official legal advice in the countries that want to use it the most.
While this is a different sort of issue, and has nothing to do with tax policy, it seems relevant to mention the example of vote swapping, which seems to be legal:
“The basic reason is that there is no exchange of anything of value,” Douglas told TheWrap. “The second is that there is no way to prove that both people went through with it.”
In the case of donation swapping, both of these ideas are shaky: It depends on the definition of “value” (do I technically get value out of giving money away?) and “prove” (receipts are easier to find for donations than votes). And of course, every country has its own law. But this example updates me slightly in the direction of viewing this favorably (though EA Hub should certainly keep looking for a definitive answer).
Do you have any more details on the opinions you’ve gotten from legal experts? I’d be interested in hearing more about the reasoning for why it’s okay.
I think Paul Christiano explained well here why it might be questionable:
Thanks David. As Paul says, it certainly isn’t clear cut. We have had unofficial legal advice, but nothing formal. The general idea from the advice is that some of the laws say things on the lines of “You must not have received goods or services from the charity”—which is still true in the case of swapping. There is also no legal obligation for your matched donor to donate to the charity you want them to donate to, and that is apparently significant. Also the tax rebate isn’t dependent on WHY you chose the charity that you donated to. If the website proves to be popular we will look into getting official legal advice in the countries that want to use it the most.
Thanks!
While this is a different sort of issue, and has nothing to do with tax policy, it seems relevant to mention the example of vote swapping, which seems to be legal:
In the case of donation swapping, both of these ideas are shaky: It depends on the definition of “value” (do I technically get value out of giving money away?) and “prove” (receipts are easier to find for donations than votes). And of course, every country has its own law. But this example updates me slightly in the direction of viewing this favorably (though EA Hub should certainly keep looking for a definitive answer).