Utah is atypical, for rather obvious reasons.
Everywhere church operating budget comes out of church donations, maintaining congregation, clergy and building. I bet that’s the major expenses, not taking care of the poor. They must publish their budget, don’t they? I would guess about 10-20% of 39% goes to servicing the poor or about 4-8% of the total contribution. Human services isn’t just for the poor. ACLU belongs to that category and multiple of others. Maybe half of Human services go to the poor. That would be 7-8% of the total. I doubt a big fraction of Harvard’s $36B goes to the poor. Maybe 10% if that. They have a huge budget and 10% is still a lot. That adds about 2%. Add them all up comes out to be about 10-20%. I don’t think you can say contributions are for the poor if all they get is far less than half. All organizations have an overhead, the expense to just sustain themselves. That itself often takes a big bite, not serving the poor. The public and the poor gets the rest of it. Actually, I am surprised how my priorities are not that much out of line except environment. We are environmentalists and clearly not religious. That may describe many on this board. If you are not religious, you are not helping the poor that much.
I found a survey on church budget,
The poor gets less than 10%. Note that not all ministries and support are for the poor.
For Harvard, Scholarships & other student awards at 3% of their annual budget in 2015 from
http://finance.harvard.edu/files/fad/files/harvard_financialreport_fy15.pdf
The most generous university budgets total of 3% for students. Again note that many of the awardees are not poor since you still get something with income $200K. They get a smaller amount but there are more of them than the truly poor. I don’t know how much operating budget comes from donations. probably about half? I am sure it’s somewhere on the report. Whatever that may be it’s already clear servicing the poor is not the biggest expense.
The church and school that takes 58% of charitable contributions give back to the poor less than 3-7%. Do you still insist charitable contributions are for the poor?
CBS Sunday Morning had a good segment with Warren Buffett yesterday. Near the end of the piece, he pooh-poohed the need for corporate tax cuts, saying the U.S. is unrivaled in productivity. He discussed flaws in trickle down theory and the need to benefit all individuals in any tax reform. Well worth the time. Wish I could mandate viewing among lawmakers. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lessons-from-warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway/
This is probably a naive question, and I keep thinking I’m missing something. So, Collins caved because they kept the 10K property tax deduction, right? But I still don’t know how that will help people in the midrange, who are losing exemptions. My example is me–
Last year, a bit over 19K in deductions, mostly mortgage and SALT, some charitable.
plus 8200–two exemptions =27K and change, overall deducted from gross income (also that “huge” 250 for teachers that’s being eliminated.)
Next year, since my deductions never added up to 24K, letting me keep the property tax deduction does not help at all. Without the usual exemptions, I might as well itemize.
Which means my 27K+ has gone down to 24K. So preserving the property taxes to some extent doesn’t seem to be applicable to most people .
And if I still had kids on my taxes, I’d be losing 4 exemptions. And many people are losing more than that.
Maybe this was covered already, but I don’t get how this will help…anyone.
What does productivities have to do where to house the headquarter? You don’t produce at headquarters. Or do you? Isn’t the issue companies headquartering overseas and skimping out on corporate tax on profits? Why were they merging with a small overseas company and headquarter there when Congress imposed an exit tax in 2015-6? Why didn’t he come out then speak against the exit tax? Why didn’t he say back then, let them go the joke is on them?
And why will they stop if the US Rate is 20% when other rates are lower?
It’s hard to establish the value of churches if you only follow the money. So much of what churches do uses volunteer labor that is not tracked at all and is not subject to financial valuation. For example a couple of churches in our town rotate a program for housing the homeless, giving them dinners and providing showering facilities, etc. We can only do that because we have a building that fits sleeping cots and has a kitchen.
We organized a huge crew of people that travel to sites of natural disasters to do free carpentry, masonry, feeding people and other relief efforts. The people don’t charge anything for their time and the church doesn’t reimburse them.
Sure, any church spends time and money on purely internal and evangelical functions. But churches also are cheerleaders and springboards for charitable work in our communities which are significant but not quantified.
@garland, the only way you can come out better off will be dependent on where the tax rate percentages cut off. If your average rate is lowered by lowering the cutoffs for the brackets and depending on where the new 12% rate cuts off, you could benefit. The House bill has four brackets and the Senate bill has seven, so they will have to iron out those differences. I am in a similar position since my standard deduction under the new plan is about $6000 less than my itemized deductions and personal exemption.
Yep, I do. Catholic Charities, for example, is the 5th largest charity in the US in terms of total revenue.
Salvation Army is the 2nd largest charity in the US with private donations of $2 Billion for the fiscal year ending 9/2007.
It’s harder to find info on Jewish Family Services because every city or area JFS is individually run. There are also many other Jewish charities (I give to Jewish World Services https://ajws.org) Also, we pay annual dues to our synagogues (several thousands of dollars a year) plus any building or capital improments the members get assessed for. Synagogue don’t pass the plate for operating expenses.
As for uni endowments - the total of their endowment is a reflection of their investments - not the amount of $$ received by donors and one can choose where they want their money to go to (for example scholarship fund - even specific scholarships.)
I also give to my private high schools scholarship fund and my son’s private high school (a non diocese school) scholarship fund.
Millions are also donated to Planned Parenthood each year (that wouid be under Health.)
Here is a list of the top 50 charities in the US and their ratings. Many dedicated to social services (including the top 7.)
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Guide-to-Giving/America-s-Top-50-charities-How-well-do-they-rate
Probably not. We may survive a few percentage imbalance, I would think but not more than that. I am afraid that’s no reason not to lower the rate. Wouldn’t it be a bit like you keep your high price when your competition is cutting their price and customers flood their store not yours? Hopefully, someone comes up with a better solution before then. Corporate tax makes up 10% revenue. Lowering it to 20% loses 3% revenue. Which poison do you prefer 3% shortfall or 10%?
@2VU0609 --right. I could possibly so. But in a larger picture, when so much else was given up, I don’t know why this is the thing that made Collins change, when it seems that for most middle class citizens, keeping the property tax deduction is not going to offset the loss of exemptions. So if she didn’t like other things in the bill, why cave on this one?
@Hayden I totally agree with you. Of course, the value is more than the amount spent. My argument was against the claim charitable donations are for the poor in purely dollar sense. Not saying dollar sense is the only sense to make.
Maybe she thought lowering corporate tax is absolutely needed. If you start there, you may be able to accept a lot of negatives. If you have to throw a bone to keep the dogs quiet…
The child tax credit has been increased in both plans ($1600 for the House plan, $2000 for the Senate plan, from $1000), which will mitigate the loss of the personal exemption for your dependents.
As with all these things, there will be some who are better off with the expanded credit (especially if the Senate plan prevails, as it has a higher amount), and some who will be worse.
The credit expires at 17 or 18, whereas the personal exemption for your kids continue as long as they dependents. So that’s a lose for people in that situation.
“The people of Maine are NOT happy with Collins.”
She has always been wishy washy. She strung the D’s along during ACA negotiations, too.
Maybe the people of Maine won’t forget this time and vote her out in 2020.
@garland, I am confused at how to compare your situation next year before/after the tax plan. I understand last year, but I can’t understand next year unless I knew how much your deductions would be…less than 24K means how much? If your deductions were going to end up being less than 16K or so, it seems like this could benefit you, think that’s about the tipping point, not adjusted for new tax rates.
Here’s something else that can irritate people because it favors higher income. The loss of exemptions means zippo to higher income taxpayers…they already lost their exemptions or had much of it phased out anyways. Along with certain itemized deductions like taxes, mortgage interest payments and charity. Wonder if they are going to keep those phaseouts going (though I realize taxes are mostly going by the wayside anyways).
@Iglooo - I think I understand what you are suggesting about a chunk of charitable contributions not benefiting the poor all that much. But I don’t think I can accept your conclusion of “If you are not religious, you are not helping the poor that much.”
I am not religious, though I had been raised that way. I donate a lot every year - my charitable contributions are above $20K every year, but most of this is in-kind, and falls into the Human Services category. We have earmarked education contributions directly towards need-based tuition assistance. In addition to my volunteer work, I think I help the poor quite a bit. I wish more people could or would.
Unless I am misunderstanding your statement, perhaps you intended it as more of comment about the subset of educational institutions getting charitable contributions, then using much of those contributions on admin and/or priorities other than financial aid.
But getting back to the topic of this thread, losing the exemptions hurts us materially, because we itemize. My medical deductions are material because our insurance is not great. We deduct our mortgage and taxes - but we are losing the state income and property tax deduction. We will still itemize, but our tax bill will go up from close to zero to almost a couple grand under the Senate version.