ALAN'S LETTER

To shed some light on why charitable tax reform has gotten so little support from the nonprofit community, I’m publishing a purloined copy of a letter written by Ms. Gimme Sommore, Director of the Shortsighted Nonprofits Association, to one of the country’s six-hundred-plus billionaires, Richard N. Wight.

It’s not just a billionaire problem. Ultra-high net worth individuals, with assets above $30 million each, represent 0.1% of all U.S. households and have a combined net worth in excess of $12 trillion. When I think about what could make America great again, I imagine a 25% tax on just the wealth above that $30 million per household.

Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote about the hoarding and transparency problem with Donor Advised Funds (DAFs). Today, I’m writing to announce the Crisis Charitable Commitment’s new initiative–which will be launched tomorrow, July 28– to address the most significant aspect of the DAF problem, a...

Tomorrow, July 14, Bastille Day, we mark the one-year anniversary of the Crisis Charitable Commitment (CCC). Almost 100 CCC signers stepped up to the plate in 2020 and gave at a higher Charitable Standard to address the multiple social and economic crises highlighted by the COVID pandemic. Through...

The fantasy of “Good Billionaire”… Warren Buffett the champion of the billionaire pack in avoiding paying taxes,… confirmed two things: First, the rigged tax code that creates billionaires and excessive wealth, and Second, it confirmed the rarified thinking of the rich: we can do a better job at deciding where the money should go…

Ultra Rich Taxes, or URTs, are laser-focused tax policies that only apply to the 0.1% (possibly 0.2%) of America’s richest households. This tiny group of people have a combined total reported income of over $1 trillion per year and sit on bank accounts and other assets worth more than $12 trillion (as a reminder, that’s a “12” followed by an unbelievable twelve zeroes)!

Have the richest among us responded to the crisis? If you were to read the headlines you’d certainly think so: $100 million for racial justice here, $10 billion for climate protection there. But the truth of the matter is that, with the exception of MacKenzie Scott and perhaps two or three others, it’s been business as usual (aka hoarding).

If the average charitable deduction tax saving is, say 50% (could be as high as 74%), it means that we the public are taking $60 billion out of the Treasury and letting the wealthy decide what kind of public investments should be made.

So along comes Jeff Bezos with a $10 billion commitment to address climate change. Wow…sort of. It’s kind of a macho thing: Gates saves us from Covid, Zuckerberg saves democracy, and Bezos saves the planet. Bezos is named philanthropist of the year by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. First, he didn’t give away $10 billion, he pledged to give it away over TEN years….The climate crisis can’t wait ten years.

Senators Klobuchar and Warren have introduced two seemingly unrelated bills, but they could be, in part, two sides of the same coin (an appropriate cliché here because we’re talking about money).