Thanks Harald, this is a terrific article and should be required reading for all UK donors. I love the graphs in particular and the content looks accurate to me. I think gift aid and tax relief are important considerations which increase the benefit of giving now relative to giving later- particularly for higher rate taxpayers. In retirement, most people will have a significantly lower income than during working life, and very few people indeed are likely to be higher rate taxpayers in retirement and benefit for a 1.67 multiplier. There also seems to be little tax benefit to donating to charities in your will - unless you have a large estate beyond the high threshold for inheritance tax (effectively 650,000 for married couples) and presumably there is no gift aid on bequests except for any income tax you paid in your final year of life?
Thanks Harald, this is a terrific article and should be required reading for all UK donors. I love the graphs in particular and the content looks accurate to me. I think gift aid and tax relief are important considerations which increase the benefit of giving now relative to giving later- particularly for higher rate taxpayers. In retirement, most people will have a significantly lower income than during working life, and very few people indeed are likely to be higher rate taxpayers in retirement and benefit for a 1.67 multiplier. There also seems to be little tax benefit to donating to charities in your will - unless you have a large estate beyond the high threshold for inheritance tax (effectively 650,000 for married couples) and presumably there is no gift aid on bequests except for any income tax you paid in your final year of life?