Subsidizing Charitable Contributions With a Match Instead of a Deduction: What Happens to Donations and Compliance?

The current U.S. income tax system subsidizes contributions to charities by allowing individual taxpayers to itemize and deduct contributions from taxable income. In effect, taxpayers can receive a rebate from the government based on the contributions they make to charitable organizations. Under one alternative system, the government matches the contributions of individual taxpayers at some rate between Opercent and 100 percent. This paper explores the tax policy and administrative implications of matching rather than rebating contributions in a tax system with voluntary reporting. We conduct a novel experiment to examine both charitable giving and compliance behavior under the two regimes.