Philanthropy News

Tuesday, November 27, 2018
The Problem With Charitable Giving

NEW YORK, NY -- Starting this fall, and well into the future, medical students at New York University will get free tuition. In a few years, shiny new facilities will welcome cancer patients in Atlanta and brain researchers at Stanford. The announcements about these developments credit generous philanthropists, but fail to mention who else is footing much of the bill: American taxpayers. Like most charitable giving, health care philanthropy is tax-deductible. When wealthy people give away millions of dollars, their tax bills go down. But that leaves the rest of us either to pick up the slack or go without the investments that our government could have made with those funds.

Thursday, November 15, 2018
IRS Announces Higher 2019 Estate And Gift Tax Limits

NEW YORK, NY -- The Internal Revenue Service announced today the official estate and gift tax limits for 2019: The estate and gift tax exemption is $11.4 million per individual, up from $11.18 million in 2018. That means an individual can leave $11.4 million to heirs and pay no federal estate or gift tax, while a married couple will be able to shield $22.8 million. The annual gift exclusion amount remains the same at $15,000. For the ultra rich, these numbers represent planning opportunities. For everybody else, they serve as a reminder: Even if you don’t have a taxable estate, you still need an estate plan.

Thursday, September 13, 2018
The Growth in Total Household Giving Is Camouflaging a Decline in Giving by Small and Medium Donors: What Can We Do about It?

BOSTON, MA -- Research on giving in the United States has now produced definitive empirical evidence to show a decline in the participation and amounts donated by “small” and “medium” (actually, median) donors and an increasing reliance on “large” donors. That lead sentence should make every reader stop and envision the future of philanthropy in our democracy. Nonprfit Quarterly's Patrick Rooney writes in support of a universal charitable deduction.