How The Chronicle Determined Each State’s Generosity Rating

By HARVY LIPMAN

Comparing the relative generosity of residents of different parts of the country is a complicated

task because comprehensive data are not available.

To make such a comparison, The Chronicle used data from the Internal Revenue Service’s Statistics of Income Bulletin for spring 2000.

The bulletin provides state-by-state totals of the number of taxpayers who itemized deductions on their tax returns, the total number of income-tax returns (with or without deductions), the adjusted gross income for all taxpayers, and the amount of charitable deductions.

7 Categories of Data

Each set of data is broken into seven income categories, ranging from taxpayers who earn less than $20,000 to those who make $200,000 or more.

To calculate the percentage of itemizers’ incomes that are donated to charity, The Chronicle first divided the number of itemized returns by the total number of returns for each category in each state. That provided the percentage of itemized returns.

Multiplying that percentage by the total adjusted gross income for each income category provided an estimate of total income for those who itemized deductions.

That figure was then divided into the total amount of charitable deductions to come up with a percentage given to charity.

Numerous tax experts caution against comparing states in which widely differing percentages of taxpayers itemize deductions on their returns. Therefore, the charts showing state-by-state rankings include only those states where at least 90 percent of taxpayers in a given income category itemized their deductions.