The price elasticity of charitable giving: does the form of tax relief matter?

Kimberley Scharf and Sarah Smith

International Tax and Public Finance, 2015, vol. 22, issue 2, 330-352

Abstract: We use a survey-based approach to compare the effects of alternative forms of tax relief on donations—a tax rebate for the donor and a matched payment to the charity. On accounting grounds these two are equivalent but, in line with earlier experimental studies, we find that charitable contributions are significantly more responsive to a match than to a rebate. The difference can largely be explained by the fact that a majority of donors do not adjust their nominal donations in response to a change in subsidy. We relate our findings to the growing literature on behavioural tax policy. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Keywords: Charitable giving; Tax incentives; Match and rebate; Salience; H2; D0; D8 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10797-014-9306-3 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The price elasticity of charitable giving: does the form of tax relief matter? (2010)
Working Paper: The Price Elasticity of Charitable Giving:Does the Form of Tax Relief Matter? (2010)
Working Paper: The price elasticity of charitable giving: does the form of tax relief matter? (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:itaxpf:v:22:y:2015:i:2:p:330-352

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/10797/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10797-014-9306-3

Access Statistics for this article

International Tax and Public Finance is currently edited by Ronald B. Davies and Kimberly Scharf

More articles in International Tax and Public Finance from Springer, International Institute of Public Finance Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().