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Charitable Contributions Of Property: A Broken System Reimagined, Roger Colinvaux

Scholarly Articles

On average, nearly $46 billion of property is given to charitable organizations each year, about twenty-five percent of the total charitable deduction. This makes the charitable contribution deduction for property a tax expenditure within a tax expenditure, yet it is rarely analyzed as such. It emerged as part of a noble effort to encourage contributions to worthy organizations. But the deduction for property has never worked well. The general rule allowing a deduction based on the fair market value of the property may have some intuitive appeal, but its implementation has yielded numerous exceptions and immense complexity. The Article argues …