Reducing evasion through self-reporting: Evidence from charitable contributions

More Giving or More Givers? The Effects of Tax Incentives on Charitable Donations in the UK

“…This estimated cost of declaring is similar in magnitude to recent non-parametric estimates of the cost of declaring charitable donations in Denmark(Gillitzer and Skov, 2018) and in the United States(Tazhitdinova, 2018).8 Clotfelter (1997) provides a thorough overview of the early literature, and Peloza and Steel (2005) implement a meta-analysis of pre-2005 studies.…”

Effects of Dependent Health Insurance Coverage Mandates on Fathers’ Job Mobility and Compensation

“…Placing the administrative burden on charities to report an information return for each donor would be costly for charities, but if society is already subsidizing charitable giving through grants and tax expenditures, then pooling the administrative costs to increase the efficacy of the donations tax credits would be less costly to society to the extent that having a charity report for all donors would be less burdensome than having each individual donor make a report. We know that donors are not claiming all the tax credits available and some of our measured inelasticity of the supply of donations may be partially attributable to tax-filers not reporting donations for which the gains of doing so are smaller than the cost of record keeping (Benzarti (2015), Rehavi andShack (2013) andTazhitdinova (2018)). This low take up is welfare gains on the table and is a signal of costly compliance, and not just a form of forgone revenue.…”

The Effect of Tax Price on Donations: Evidence from Canada

“…Placing the administrative burden on charities to report an information return for each donor would be costly for charities, but if society is already subsidizing charitable giving through grants and tax expenditures, then pooling the administrative costs to increase the efficacy of the donations tax credits would be less costly to society to the extent that having a charity report for all donors would be less burdensome than having each individual donor make a report. We know that donors are not claiming all the tax credits available and some of our measured inelasticity of the supply of donations may be partially attributable to tax-filers not reporting donations for which the gains of doing so are smaller than the cost of record keeping (Benzarti (2015), Rehavi and Shack (2013) and Tazhitdinova (2018)). This low take up is welfare gains on the table and is a signal of costly compliance, and not just a form of forgone revenue.…”