Effects of Taxation of Philanthropic Activities on the National Welfare

本研究考察了日本和其他国家对慈善活动的特殊安排和税收优惠待遇。它审查了这种安排的目的、给予优惠待遇的主题事项以及这些待遇在实现所述目标方面的有效性。它还研究了一些规范性问题，例如哪些事项应受特别安排的约束以及应采用何种方法。当在艺术、文化和科学活动中寻求促进独创性和新思想时，由政府直接资助鼓励少数政府选择的活动的方法，与鼓励私人资助个别选择的活动相比，将不会有效。对于后一种方法，箭头比前一种更广泛的实验活动，避免了浪费大量资源的风险在几个不成功的正式选择的活动。但私人融资是不够的；公众应该承担这些活动的一部分费用，因为这些活动如果成功，将使全体人民受益。为了满足这些相互矛盾的目标，对特定慈善活动捐款的优惠待遇经常被纳入个人和公司所得税法。显然，如果有资格获得特殊待遇的活动的规格过于狭窄。该系统在产生原创想法方面变得有效，但另一方面，如果过于广泛，该系统可能会被滥用于避税。本研究发现，英国采用的另一种制度，即所谓的“契约法”，在这方面可能值得认真考虑。除了对资金的接受者产生不同的结果外，与将资金作为税收收取然后由政府作为支出分配给他们的情况相比，优惠安排将对用于慈善活动的资金总额产生不同的影响。人们经常争辩说，这种所谓的税收支出法不会增加用于具体活动的资金总额。但该研究认为，在没有税收优惠待遇的情况下不会进行的许多活动可能会在有税收优惠待遇的情况下出现。因此，实行优惠待遇可以增加用于慈善活动的资金总额。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