Giedre Lideikyte Huber

This study conducts the first large-scale analysis of tax incentives for charitable giving in Switzerland, focusing on regular donors and using innovative statistical forecasts. For the first time, these estimates are validated with cumulative data from Geneva authorities. Using unique panel data from Geneva taxpayers (2001–2011), this study examines income tax deductions, donation frequency, and donor characteristics, alongside forecasts for future charitable deductions and donor trends. This period also included a legal reform that raised the deduction ceilings. Findings reveal that 29% of donors deducted only once, while 71% deducted multiple times. Regular donors are not significantly influenced by tax incentive ceilings, but their donations increase over time. Wealth plays a crucial role in donation frequency, as shown by linear regression estimates. Time-series forecasting models predict total deductions steadily reaching CHF135 million by 2022, with results validated against actual data. The donor population was also forecasted to grow, reaching 72,349 by 2022, four times the 2001 figure. Based on these empirical findings, the study suggests policy measures to enhance charitable giving, aligning with legislative tax reforms. These projections offer valuable insights into optimizing tax incentives.

The military invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on February 24, 2022, and the further introduction of martial law affected all spheres of Ukrainian society, including the non-profit sector’s activities. As a result, civil society institutions were forced to adapt to new public needs, as well as to emerging security challenges and new regulatory restrictions. In this research note, we examine on one side, how the martial law and previous legislation (and the related societal upheavals) have shaped the new roles and functioning of non-profit organizations in Ukraine and, on the other side, what the challenges to volunteers’ and domestic non-profit organizations’ activities in Ukraine deriving from these regulations and legislations. The identification of these challenges ensues from a survey of the Ukrainian non-profit sector as well as an analysis of Ukrainian regulation, statistical data, and recent scientific papers. Overall, we highlight a key discrepancy between Ukrainians’ concept of charitable activities as well as humanitarian aid and the Western approach to the same concepts and suggest regulatory improvements to address other challenges identified to facilitate philanthropic activities in Ukraine.

Article “For-Profit Philanthropy: Elite Power and the Threat of Limited Liability Companies, Donor-Advised Funds, and Strategic Corporate Giving” By Dana Brakman Reiser and Steven A. Dean. Published in 2022 by Oxford University Press, 329 pages. Reviewed by Giedre Lideikyte Huber was published on April 4, 2023 in the journal Nonprofit Policy Forum (volume 0, issue 0).

Taxation of philanthropy is a heterogeneous topic that extends to multiple scientific disciplines. For academics and practitioners working in philanthropy, it is not uncommon to turn to branches such as philosophy, law, sociology, and economics to obtain thorough answers to the questions they encounter in their research and work. To date, however, there has been no comprehensive multidisciplinary analysis of the interaction between taxation and philanthropy. The present volume seeks to fill this gap. Through this handbook, the editors also endeavored to contribute to the emerging multidisciplinary domain that can be referred to as “the science of philanthropy.” It is hoped that the readers will find the contributions in this volume not only useful but also thought provoking and that they will be encouraged to pursue such studies further.

This contribution presents the legal framework of income tax incentives for charitable giving in Switzerland and describes the reform putting this system in place in 2006. Using a unique data set shared by the Tax Administration of the Canton of Geneva for this purpose, we provide descriptive statistics about taxpayers’ charitable giving behavior in Geneva from 2001 to 2011. In this period, the number of taxpayers deducting charitable contributions significantly increased. In contrast, the size of individual annual deductions (both mean and median) decreased. The data show that the amount of tax deductions for charitable giving sharply increased relative to income class, and the median charitable deduction by taxpayer rose exponentially with income (i.e., years 2001 and 2011). Currently, no clear effects of the 2006 tax reform are visible; however, more in-depth studies are needed in this respect.

We introduce behavioural philanthropy, a novel interdisciplinary approach examining philanthropic decisions from the perspective of individual decision-makers. Such an approach is relevant to policymakers and law researchers who design tax-based incentives to stimulate private engagement in philanthropy. Behavioural philanthropy relies on insights from psychology, economics, and law to understand the motives that drive individuals, unveil patterns in behaviour, and identify the key forces that shape decisions in the context of philanthropy. In the first section, we highlight the relevance of individual contributions to philanthropy. Following this, we review and discuss extant research that underlies the motivations of individuals engaging in philanthropic behaviours, analyses some weaknesses of the existing approaches, and highlights the benefits of producing data in controlled environments, such as in laboratory settings. We believe that integrating the benefits of these approaches into behavioural philanthropy will: 1) promote the understanding of the psychological and affective mechanisms supporting philanthropic decision making, 2) help build new sound theories that rely on precise computational models and allow for a mechanistic understanding of the complex behaviours in philanthropy, and 3) provide implications for behaviourally informed policy that could help design efficient tax schemes to generate the most impactful giving and welfare systems across the globe.

The Routledge Handbook of Taxation and Philanthropy ventures into a territory that is still widely unexplored. It contains 30 academic contributions that aim to provide a better understanding of whether, why, and how philanthropic initiatives, understood as voluntary contributions for the common good, can and should be fostered by states through tax incentives. The topic has been addressed from a multidisciplinary and multicultural perspective – covering neuroeconomics, sociology, political science, psychology, affective sciences, philosophy, behavioral economy, and law – because of its global and multifaceted nature. It also contains the OECD report on Taxation and Philanthropy released in November 2020, which was prepared in this context as a result of a collaboration with the Geneva Centre for Philanthropy of the University of Geneva. The book is divided into four sections, exploring, respectively, the justification of tax incentives for philanthropy, theoretical and empirical insights about taxes, efficiency and donor behavior in that context, and tax incentives for cross-border philanthropy and for hybrid entities and social entrepreneurship. It is believed that this volume will be a landmark yet only the beginning of a journey in which a lot remains to be studied, learned, and said.