---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Mike Godwin mnemonic@gmail.com Date: Oct 24, 2007 8:34 PM Subject: Fwd: More on tax deductibility To: foundation-l-owner@lists.wikimedia.org

Begin forwarded message:

From: Mike Godwin mnemonic@gmail.com Date: October 24, 2007 2:32:45 PM EDT To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: More on tax deductibility

From: "Sebastian Moleski" sebmol@gmail.com

On 10/24/07, Michael Bimmler mbimmler@gmail.com wrote:

Rather, what we should stress more is that tax deductibility allows individuals to make larger contributions than they ordinarily could or would.

There's a good reason for us not to stress tax deductibility for donors in nations whose laws don't provide for it (or at least not if the donations are made to a U.S.-based charity). We would be telling those donors they're going to get a benefit that they may not get. I think there's a good ethical argument against doing so.

Also, there's a logical fallacy here by stating that since only one third of Americans/donors itemize we don't need to emphasize the deductibility.

That is not, however, the argument I make. The argument is that we shouldn't emphasize deductibility for donors who won't or who may not receive it.

One problem, for example, under German law one cannot deduct charitable contributions to foreign charities. That quite practically means that Germans who give directly to the foundation cannot deduct these donations on their tax return so the incentive mentioned above doesn't exist. I would be surprised if there are not similar issues in other countries, which we should be aware of.

This is in fact the argument I was making.

Whatever fallacies may lie in telling the truth in order to avoid misleading potential donors, I don't believe any of them is a "logical fallacy."

Ec writes:

I would disagree on the demographics of American donors. The one single thing that triggers itemized deductions more than anything else is home mortgage interest. Given that we have a large proportion of students involved in Wikipedia, and they have not usually gotten to the point of buying a home, it would be reasonable to suggest that they are worse off than the statistically average American.

That's a perfectly reasonable assumption. (I could make an argument for the converse assumption.) But the point, of course, was that we have no data at all about the demographics of donors.

Good statistical method (I was a student of statistics in my youth) suggests that when you have no data at all you do best by beginning with the Null Hypothesis.

--Mike Godwin General Counsel Wikimedia Foundation