This Article compares the ways in which the United States and the European Union limit the ability of state-level entities to subsidize their own residents, whether through direct subsidies or through tax expenditures. It uses four recent charitable giving cases decided by the European Court of...

This article considers two unrelated tax provisions – healthcare Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) and the charitable deduction. FSAs permit eligible taxpayers to set income aside tax-free to use for medical expenses. However, these accounts have a “use-it-or-lose-it” feature that...

The philanthropic sector is highly consequential, particularly in the United States, and the most important policies directed toward this sector are tax policies. Yet most economic analysis of the optimal tax treatment of charitable giving is ad hoc, treating it as a subject unto itself. This...

This article explores a long-standing research and policy question on whether tax incentives for charitable giving are desirable from legal and economic perspectives. The author discusses legal and empirical aspects that are important in designing tax incentives for charitable giving. Firstly,...

Many EU Member States only grant tax incentives to resident charities. This limits the choice of donors and restricts the free movement of capital. The paper discusses this problem and the action taken by the European Commission, the ECJ (the Stauffer and Persche cases) and private organisations

Article considers whether income tax exemption for charities is consistent with normal income tax. .It finds that exemption for contributions is not special treatment and that exemption for income from sale of goods or performance of services related to the purpose of the charity is special...

The idea has gained currency that the Taxing Clause in the Constitution gives Congress the power to do anything, or almost anything, that would be funded by taxation. Most recently, that argument has been advanced in connection with the litigation about the individual mandate in the Obamacare...

Therefore, to give greater assurance that the public benefit of the gift will be consistent with the claimed deduction, the donee should be required to certify that it has selected the easement consistent with its mission and it has both the resources to manage and enforce the restriction and a...

Behavioral economics introduced the concept of salience to law and economics. In the area of tax policy, salience refers to the prominence of taxes in the minds of taxpayers. This article complicates the literature on salience and taxation by introducing the concept of “hypersalience,” which...