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

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...

Individuals often fund charitable gifts with their savings or retirement benefits. However, such benefits, other than those from a Roth individual retirement arrangement, are generally included in the individual's gross income when received, and may not be deductible from the donor's income....

The tax treatment of cross-border charitable contributions increasingly concerns both individuals and corporations. Individuals make donations of money, financial, and nonfinancial assets, including intellectual property, time, and skills on their own or someone else's behalf to support...

Charitable trust law authorizes surnamed trusts, and provides no convenient mechanism to force a name change even hundreds of years after the founder's death. Tax law treats the use of a surname as harmless. A founder's ability to surname can provide a significant benefit to the founding family...