Charities will suffer in 2018

I've written my usual tax-deductible checks to nonprofits in the past couple of weeks, knowing that 2017 may be the last year that nonprofit charities will see a year-end windfall from taxpayers hoping to do some good while reducing their own tax liability.

The recently passed Republican tax bill raises the standard deduction to a level ($12,200 for single filers and $24,400 for joint filers) that will be higher than the vast majority of taxpayer/donors will have in itemized deductions. (A family with an annual income of $100,000 would need charitable deductions of nearly 25 percent of gross incomes to make it worthwhile to deduct.) Thus, few taxpayers will submit itemized deductions.

Advocates of the tax bill think that's a good thing: Taxes will be simpler for most people. Identifying and documenting every charitable donation we make over a year is challenging. The church provides us an itemized list, but other donations to favorite charities or memorial gifts to churches and other charities can be harder to track down. So, yes, tax preparation will be somewhat simpler for 2018.

For charities, however, the simplification of the tax bill will bring a great cost. Without the incentive of a tax deduction, many small donors (giving $25 or $100 or even $1,000 to a charity) will decide not to bother. For nonprofits (a field that employed me the past eight years), small donations are lifeblood. Without those small donations, nonprofit budgets will be decimated. All the good things that nonprofits do in the community will be jeopardized. Nonprofits struggle as it is to attract enough revenue in donations, grants or other resources just to continue their work. Take away tax deductible charitable donations, and many nonprofits will shrink or close up shop.

And that would be a death blow to the moral fiber of communities as poverty, homelessness and hunger swamp society without the dike of charitable donations.

Stingy politicians' character shows on tax returns

The release of 2008 tax returns by President Barak Obama and Vice President Joe Biden does little to encourage charity among lesser Americans. The Obamas are wealthy, thanks to the sales of the president's two books (both of which I've read and recommend), but the Bidens, though well-to-do in terms of ordinary Americans, are relatively poor by Senate/vice presidential standards.

What I found interesting in the returns, and I've been noting this for 30 years, is our leaders' charitable giving. The Obamas donated $172,050 out of a gross income of nearly $2.7 million to charity, about 6.5 percent. In terms of national averages, the Obamas were much more generous than the average American. The Bidens, on the other hand, donated $1,885 out of an adjusted gross income of $269,256. That's way less than 10 percent; in fact, it's less than 1 percent. In fact, it's considerably less than my wife and I (on far, far less income than the Bidens') listed on our 2008 returns.

The White House, in releasing the returns, commented that the Bidens' contributions listed on their returns do not include all their charitable contributions, citing donations to church as not included in the returns. Huh? Do you mean the vice president is making charitable donations but not deducting them from his taxes? What would prompt him to do that?

Charitable donations by presidents and presidential candidates have disappointed me for decades. Ronald Reagan's contributions were stingy, as were the Clintons, if memory serves. The last time I recall being impressed by a president's charity was during the Carter years. Jimmy Carter, regardless of what else you might say, is a man who lived his faith.

Does charity matter? I think it says something about character. I know people with low income, perhaps poverty level, who are quite generous in their charity. We all know others, such as Joe and Jill Biden, who give minuscule shares of their blessings to charity. Charity is an obligation in my view and in the view of the world's great religions. Some years ago, when I was running a newsroom, I urged my colleagues to sign up for United Way payroll deductions. Despite a pay freeze that had eliminated pay raises at the newspaper for the past couple of years, I told them in an e-mail that we were far better off than those helped by the United Way and, despite our own fiscal worries, we could afford to help others immeasurably worse off than we were. I don't know whether my appeal improved the newspaper's embarrassingly low participation in United Way, but I know it expressed a sincere conviction.

If Joe Biden truly believes in helping the unfortunate, it should show in his tax return.