Monday, December 19, 2005

Who Gives?

As reported in this article, the wealthiest Americans are not the ones who donate the most to charities. A study was done analyzing charitable giving as a percentage of assets, looking at the data by age, sex and level of wealth, among other variables, using data from 2003 tax returns.

Among working age people, those with incomes of $50,000-100,000 donate 2 to 6 times as much of their assets to charity as those who make over $10 million.

The least generous of all Americans were the 285 taxpayers under age 35 who made over $10 million, donating only about .4% of their assets.

Other interesting tidbits: single men are more generous than single women. But among the top group of those who earn more than $10 million, the average single women had investment assets almost double those of the average single man.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is because now days a lot of people are greedy. If people realized that they may end up like that one day they might help out more. Also if a person only donated to the charities in their state and the money was kept in those charities not bunch into the whole charitie system charities would be better off. So even if someone has a dollar left, got a place to stay and some food I think they should donate that dollar someone else needs it more than they do.

Anonymous said...

No offense. Person making 10MM a year who gives $100K a year to charity you are calling selfish?

You cant expect people to donate based on there income. There are a lot of wealth Americans who gives millions of dollars to charity just because that millions is a small percentage of there total assets or icomes you think they are selfish?

Top #1 of this contry donate about 60% of all money charity gets and pay about 75% of all the tax revenue so even tho they give or pay less percentage wise to there income or assets they still give very alot.

Madame X said...

Yes, actually I do think someone making $10 million a year who only gives $100k to charity is selfish and should be ashamed of themselves. That person still has $9.9 million left to live off, and I think it is just part of the social contract we all live with that those who are most rewarded have a duty to give something back. One of the justifications for all these tax cuts for wealthy people while government programs are being cut is that charitable giving will take up the slack, but it doesn't seem like that is really happening.

Anonymous said...

I dont see how people can complain someone who gives away $100K or even $200K dollars a year to charity can be called selfish. If you belive people should give a set % of there income to a charity then how is it charity? And just add a new tax.
You should like the people who cry that the rich dont pay enough taxes but yet most of tax base is paid by the top 1% of the country who really get no benfits most of there tax revune.

It sounds like you want to punish anyone who has money just because no matter how much in taxes they pay or how much charity they give away it just not enough. Forget the fact they work hard to earn there money if they want to a vaction home they should not be allowed because they either need to pay more in taxes or give away more to charitys because god forbid they are able to buy or have more things than you.

Anonymous said...

you are a communist.