Income tax policy and charitable giving

Many studies over the past 20 years have looked at the response of charitable donations to tax incentives—the tax price elasticity of giving. Generally, authors have assumed this elasticity is constant across all types of giving. Using the 2001 Panel Study of Income Dynamics data on charitable giving, this paper estimates the tax price elasticity across six nonprofit subsectors, finding substantial variation. These results suggest that the fiscal effectiveness of tax deductibility depends on the type of donation involved. This has implications for both public policy and nonprofit management. © 2007 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management