Charitable Giving
Events
Public goods, private charity
How can the State regulate charity business?
Biens publics, charité privée - Comment l'État peut-il réguler le charity business?
23 November 2018
École Normale Supérieure, 48 bd Jourdan 75014 Paris (salle R1-09)
Gabrielle Fack
Camille Landais
Alix Myczkowski
In a context of public finance crisis, States are seeking to encourage voluntary financing as an alternative to taxation to finance public goods such as cultural institutions, education, research, and so on. They have therefore been putting in place for around fifteen years tax incentives for donations, with the hope of reaching a level of private financing similar to that of the United States, where the level of philanthropy is much higher than in Europe.
Thus in France, one euro donation today opens the right to a tax reduction of between 0.66 and 0.75 euros. As public spending associated with these incentives increases, we must question the effectiveness of such schemes: to what extent can the state encourage private charity through financial incentives?
To answer this question, it is necessary to analyze and compare the levels of donations in different countries. After bringing together the sources available to study the financing of private goods around the world, by comparing in particular the evolution of donations in France, the United States, Canada and Denmark, the authors seek to understand the motivations of donors and then analyze the effectiveness of tax incentives for donations, taking into account the fact that financial incentives are sometimes counterproductive in the case of private charity. How to improve the existing system?