Saturday, November 17, 2012

Study Finds Rich People Give Much Less To Charity Than Poor People

Is this article bias?: http://www.examiner.com/article/study-finds-rich-people-give-much-less-to-charity-than-poor-people

"The study by philanthropy.com accumulated data by following the donation patterns of every state. It concluded that people who make between $50,000 and $75,000 a year donated 7.6% of their discretionary income to charity. Conversely, those making $100,000 or more only donated 4.2%."

Maybe the findings could be true...... but they were tracking individuals. If you are making more than 200k a year and listing it as personal income you aren't getting the full tax breaks, thus excluding you from the bias attack of the article.

You should be incorporated and making the donations through the corporation. No reason to get hit by capital gains tax, then income tax, then donate what's left over. Better to just do it at the "smarter level" aka before taxed as personal income.

"An even curiouser trend found that if the local population contained 40% of people making $200,000 a year then the donation rates plummeted to a paltry 2.8%."

I love numbers. Let me show you:

  • 50,000 x 7.6% = $3,800
  • 75,000 x 7.6% = $5,700
  • Total: $9,500
Looks good so far? Now let's see what happens when we "track" the rich people:
  • 100,000 x 4.2% = $4,200
  • 200,000 x 2.8% = $5,600
  • Total: $9,800
So wait a minute... they donated less as a %, but donated more overall. But we are still faced with another problem. The "study" lumps the group into "100,000 or more". So what about the rich people? I hardly classify 100k a year as "Rich". 

Gates Foundation (http://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/Pages/foundation-fact-sheet.aspx)

Statistics

Number of employees: 1,058(1)
Asset trust endowment: $36.2 billion(3)(1)
Total grants paid since inception: $25.0 billion (1)(2)
Total 2010 grant payments: $2.6 billion(4)
Total 2011 grant payments: $3.4 billion(5)

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