Paul Reed on incentives for charitable donations

Dr. Paul Reed (Sociology/Anthropology, and Law) was invited by Parliament’s Standing Committee on Finance to testify at the outset of its hearings in 2012 on existing and possible incentives for charitable donations.  Drawing on fifteen years of quantitative analysis of charitable giving in Canada, Dr. Reed noted (i) that the incidence of formal charitable giving in Canada is weakening, (ii) that charitable giving is a heterogeneous phenomenon and not easily subject to generalizations, (iii) that the majority of charitable donors say that tax credits play little or no role in their donation decision-making, and (iv) that increasing tax credits would have limited effect unless targetted on particular types of donors….Read more here