Should Charitable and Political Donations Benefit from Similar Tax Treatments? Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Julia Cagé (), Malka Guillot and Yuchen Huang
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Julia Cagé: Institut d'Études Politiques [IEP] - Paris, CEPR - Center for Economic Policy Research
Malka Guillot: HEC Liège
Yuchen Huang: Institut d'Études Politiques [IEP] - Paris

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Abstract: In many countries, both charitable and political donations benefit from generous -and often similar -tax incentives. While a large literature has studied the tax-price elasticity of charitable giving, little is known about political donations. Using a large-scale survey experiment (N = 12, 600), we investigate the relative efficiency of different tax schemes in fostering political and charitable donations. We document that repealing the existing non-refundable income-tax credit decreases charitable donations but not political donations, pointing toward greater fiscal incentives behind charitable giving. We next show that, conditional on giving, matching -where the government matches individual donations at a fixed rate -increases both political and charitable giving, but that it decreases the probability of giving to charities at the extensive margin. Finally, using a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and generic machine learning, we document important dimensions of heterogeneity, and discuss the policy implications of our findings.

Keywords: charitable giving; political donations; tax incentives; matching subsidies; rebate subsidies; survey experiment; heterogeneous treatment effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-05626404v1
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