Opinion: Revamp Tax System to Encourage People to Make Charitable Donations

Rather than relying on very wealthy people to give large sums of money, governments should rework the tax system to give people the option of paying extra sums that will benefit charity, writes a social-policy scholar in an opinion article for the Guardian.

Julian Le Grand, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, says that taxpayers could be given the choice to pay 1 percent extra income tax to a specific charity automatically. Under his plan, people would have to choose to opt out of giving the money to a charitable cause. He also suggests that tax returns be made public so wealthy people would feel pressure to demonstrate they were charitable.

He writes that the “yoking together of philanthropy and tax could be fruitful, especially in a time of fiscal austerity. Its introduction would signal a shift in cultural attitudes towards taxation and inequality. And it could actually lead to the ultimate aim that many would happily endorse: a reduction in inequality itself.”