Poll: Who should get to spend all of that lovely cash?

[andrewducker]

[Poll #1833371]

context.

Comments

[zz]

but then i am a civil servant that gets to buy toys with public money...

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I am enjoying the non biased presentation of the question.

[andrewducker]

I wanted to give option 1 every possible advantage, so that nobody could accuse me of biasing things towards the winning side.

Also, it's Friday :->

[andrewducker]

Oh, and I don't seem to have an email address for you. Could you drop yours to andrew@ducker.org.uk so I can drop you a line? Thanks!

[hano.livejournal.com]

I see what you did there. Have you considered a career with a right wing news organisation? The Daily Mail could clearly use a man with your skillset...

[andrewducker]

Sadly, I don't think The Daily Mail is a satire designed to make people rail against obvious stupid nastiness and cause a resurgence of feminism.

That would be The Republican Party.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I just think that Gift Aid is unnecessary complexity. If we think that we should be giving government money to charities that receive private money, let's just do that according to some fixed proportion. But better still, let's not.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

I'd assumed it was a cognitive hack to encourage charitable giving.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Gift Aid sort of lets people vote (with their money) on how the government selects charities to give money to; I do think that is better than giving ever charity a fixed % of the total allocated to charity-giving by the government. But I think it is bad because richer people get a much bigger vote.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

most charities are a horrendous scam...

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Not sure what to make of your "most", when there are a few really big charities and a great many small ones. Do you mean "if you go through the list of registered charities, a random choice from the list is more likely than not to be a horrendous scam" or "a random pound donated to charity in this country is probably going to a horrendous scam"? And could you point me to the evidence? Thanks!

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

If you take the view (as I do) that part of the moral authority for raising taxes is that some of the assets used by individuals or organisations to create the wealth they enjoy are communial then I think it only fair that the group gets some input to decisions about where "surplus" wealth is spent.

[anef.livejournal.com]

Well charity tax is my bread and butter, so I think the Treasury's latest brainwave is horrendous. I do think it's reasonable that if people want to give to charity the government should give them tax relief on the donations. If you're a millionaire using a significant proportion of your vast income for the public benefit, why should you be taxed on it? I am baffled by a Chancellor of the Exchequer who seems to think that this is tax avoidance.

And I disagree with the person above who said "most charities are a horrendous scam". I work with a lot of charities, and they aren't.

[andrewducker]

I'm not sure why giving money to charity should take precedence over the money being used to pay for the various needs of the government/population.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

I agree with Andrew - just because you have saved 5 billion starving donkeys or cured AIDS doesn't absolve you of the need to contribute towards emptying the bins and sweeping the streets.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I've got to agree here. It doesn't seem like tax avoidance for me. But I'm in the university sector so, like you, this scheme directly benefits me.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

I understood that there was a lot of abuse of the system by the wealthy precisely for tax avoidance. e.g the UKSA sailing school on the Isle of Wight - technically a charity, set up by the chap who set up MFI... they get all fuel free of tax, all sorts of deductions and benefits on the strength of part of their work being with kids - but mainly it's a commercial sailing school charging about £10K per 4 month course to punters.

Okay you are the expert, tell me they are not all on the make, employing relatives etc. etc... I want to believe, I really do. What % of the take goes to the cause. If I see a broad set of data supporting your POV then I'll back down... I'm only going on what people I knwo who have worked for charities...

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

If you're a millionaire using a significant proportion of your vast income for the public benefit, why should you be taxed on it?

First: Because you're not using it for public benefit. You're spending it in a few places where you've decided to put it, which *might* be for the public benefit but it also might not be. "Public benefit" is not the test being used.

Second: Because why should you give away pre-tax money? The point of tax is "you earned X, we take Y% of that because of all the benefits we provide that have contributed to your ability to earn X". There is absolutely no justification for pretending that X is smaller because you decided to give some of it away. No, you still pulled X out of the economy, which means you owe Y% of it. Giving some of it to someone who promises to do nice things with it does not change that you pulled X out.

If, after paying the appropriate taxes and giving the society that enabled you to become a millionaire in the first place the amount you owe them for their services, you still find yourself with more money than you need to live on? Awesome. Give that away all you want. But "charitable donations" deductions are just "giving away money you owe to the rest of society instead of paying your debt to them".

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

I don't see why people should expect to get out of paying tax by donating to charity, especially when Eton gets to be a charity! Millionaires can afford to do both.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Is it really "getting out of paying tax"? I don't think there's any scheme in place where a person can actually give to charity and at the end of it have more money as a result.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

It's far, far easier to impose oversight and transparency on the latter option. I think it'll end up with a saner allocation of money.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

It's much more complicated than that...

[andrewducker]

Everything is. (And I want a variant of that on my tombstone.)

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Dear God I don't know how you can handle these arguments sometimes...

[andrewducker]

It depends on how long my code is taking to compile :->
http://xkcd.com/303/

(Also, this is something I hadn't thought about before, and it was handy to have a few people to bash ideas off of while I worked out what I thought.)

[helflaed.livejournal.com]

People pick and choose which charities they want to give to- so the funds are skewed towards popular causes.

It is easier, for example, to raise money for disabled children, than disabled adults- even though the adults' needs my be just as great, if not greater.

At least through taxation there is (in theory at least) a cohesive plan about where the money is needed and where it should go. Charitable giving is far more random.

Furthermore, there are some things (such as supporting injured servicemen) which should be done by government- there shouldn't be a need for organisations like SSAFA or Help for Heroes if they fulfilled their responsibilities.

Incidentally, this comes from someone who works for both charity and local government, volunteers for charity, and is involved providing clerical support to a discussion group consisting of various charities who meet to co-ordinate their efforts.

[doubtingmichael.livejournal.com]

I always saw it as the government saying "Hey, taxpayer - giving to charities is good. We like it if you do that. If you do, we'll chip in a bit as well."

I take the points about inappropriate charities, and I wouldn't mind a crackdown on some of them, but we also need to ask "What ends up giving charities more money?" Having the government offer incentives for that seems sensible: sometimes the economic benefits are what matter most.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Even if people all give the same amount of money-that-they-see after this incentive goes away charities will see less money. If I previously gave 60 pounds and the charity got 100 pounds I don't see that now I can suddenly afford to give 100 pounds just because if I give 60 they only get 60...

But apparently some people will actually give less money-that-they-see because of the removal of this brain-hack.

I think we need to ask rather "What ends up putting the most money to the best use?". Depending on your pov some charities are a better use of money than others; and maybe things that governments (but not charities) do with money could be better (or worse). We might rationally prefer giving the NHS more money to spend on cancer than giving the same money to a cancer charity.

[tobyaw]

This should be taken further — I’d like everyone to be able to prioritise where their PAYE should go.

I’d like my taxes to fund health, education, and transport. I don’t want my taxes spent on defence, international development, the EU, or unfunded public sector pensions.

Same for local councils — I want a direct say in where Fife Council spends my taxes. I’m happy for them to spend money on schools and transport, but find the scale of their spend on social services to be totally unacceptable when they are reducing money spent on things like libraries, sports facilities, and public loos.

Letting individuals have control over how their money is spent — either through charities or through taxation — seems utterly sensible, and might realign government priorities. And avoid massive, expensive, vanity projects like London 2012.

I like choice.