Obama's Impact on Charitable Giving

Jim Geraghty has some information on the devastating effect Barack Obama's new tax plan could have on charitable giving:

Impact of Obama's Charity Tax Ten Times Worse Than Current Recession

Obama, in his press conference last week:

I mean, if you look at the evidence — there's very little evidence that this has a significant impact on charitable giving. I'll tell you what has a significant impact on charitable giving is a financial crisis and an economy that's contracting. And so the most important thing that I can do for charitable giving is to fix the economy, to get banks lending again, to get businesses opening their doors again, to get people back to work again. Then I think charities will do just fine.

Actually, charitable foundations managed to stay close to previous donation levels, even in last year's contracting economy.

The nation’s foundations lost nearly $150 billion in assets last year, or almost as much as they have given away over the last four years, a new study has found.

The study, by the Foundation Center, a chief authority on American philanthropy, determined that foundation giving for the year nonetheless held steady at an estimated $45.6 billion, falling by just 1 percent on an inflation-adjusted basis.

Still, without the $2.8 billion given away by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the nation’s largest, the decline would have been almost 3 percent.

The study cautions that this coming year could be considerably tougher for charities than last year.

But the fact remains that in a particularly sluggish year, foundations reduced their donations by only $456 million; by contrast, Obama's tax proposal would reduce charitable contributions by about $4 billion.

But hey, it's not that significant. Obama told us so.