Effects of Taxation of Philanthropic Activities on the National Welfare

本研究考察了日本和其他国家慈善活动的特殊安排和税收优惠。考察了这种安排的目的、给予优惠的对象和待遇在实现所述目标方面的有效性。还研究了哪些事项应该受到特殊安排的约束和采取什么方法等规范性问题。在艺术、文化和科学活动中寻求原创和新想法时，通过政府直接资助鼓励少数政府选择的活动的方法，与鼓励私人资助个人选择的活动相比，效果不佳。因为后一种方法比前一种方法在更广泛的活动范围内进行了更多的实验，并避免了将大量资源浪费在几个不成功的官方选择的ac…上的风险更多的活动。但私人融资是不够的；公众应该承担此类活动的部分成本，因为活动的好处，如果成功，将惠及所有人。为了满足这些相互冲突的目标，对特定慈善活动的捐赠往往被纳入个人和公司所得税法。显然，如果将符合特殊处理条件的活动的规格制定得太窄，该系统在产生原创想法方面就变得无效，另一方面，如果太广泛，该系统可能被滥用于避税。这项研究发现，在这方面，英国采用的另一种本土制度，即被称为“契约法”的制度，可能值得认真考虑。除了对资金接受者产生不同的结果外，优惠安排还将对用于慈善活动的资金总额产生不同的影响，而不是将资金作为税收征收，然后作为政府支出分配给他们。通常认为，这种所谓的税收支出方法不会增加用于特定活动的资金总额。但研究认为，许多活动在没有税收优惠的情况下可能会出现，因此引入优惠措施可能会增加用于慈善活动的资金总额。较少

This study investingated special arrangements and preferential tax treatments given to the philanthropic activities in Japan as well as other countries.It examined the purposes of such arrangements, the subject matters to which preferential treatments were given and effectiveness of the treatments in achieving the stated objectives.It also in vestigated normative questions such as that what matters should be made subject to the special arrangements and what methods should be employed.When promotion of originalities and new ideas are sought in artistic, cultural and scientific activities, the method of encouraging a few governmentally selected activities by the government's direct financing would not be effective as compared with encouraging private financing of individually seletcted activities, for the latter method arrows more than the former experiments in a wide range of activities and avoids the risks of wasting a large sum of resources on a few unsuccessful officially selected ac … More tivities. But private financing would not be sufficient ; the public should bear a part of the cost of such activities, for the benefits of the activities, if successful, would accrue to the entire population.To meet there conflicting objectives, preferential treatments of donations to specific philanthropic activities are often incorporated in individual and corporation income tax laws. Obviously, if the specifications of activities to be qualified for the special treatments are made too narrowly.the system becomes in effective in generating original ideas, and on the other hand if too widely, the system may be abused for tax aviations. This study finds that an alter native system employed in Britain, the system referred to as "covenant method, " may be worth for serious consideration in this respect.In addition to produce differential results on the recipients of the funds, the preferential arrangements would produce differential effect on the aggregate amount of funds to be directed to philanthropic activities as compared with the case where the monies are collected as taxs and then distributed to them as expenditures by the government. It is often argued that this socalled tax expenditure method would not in crease the aggregate amount of funds directed to the specific activities.But the study argues that there are many activities which would not curried out in the absence of the preferential tax treatments may appear in their presence.Hence introduction of the preferential treatments could in crease the aggregate amount of funds directed to the philanthropic activities. Less