Awesome people and their ability to make you know how awesome they are

[*michaelsean*]

(12-08-2018, 02:58 PM)grampahol Wrote: Among professional athletes and other celebrities the philanthropy is just a portion of their marketing strategy which to me amounts to just about nothing at best since I assume it's all written off as tax write offs meaning that we as tax payers actually foot the bill in the long run. So you make a gazillion bucks a year and "donate" a small portion to charities or whatever and at the end of the fiscal year you go to the IRS and say, "I want it all deducted from my tax bill .." In essence it's saying that what you are really doing is getting Uncle Sugar to actually donate the money in your name and it becomes little more than an accounting game to lower your tax liability and of course the big "charities"  have millionaire administrators paid to play even more accounting games to make us all think they're such altruistic souls when in fact I have a strong hunch they are not. 
Now this isn't to say that there are no altruistic people with celebrity status. I'm sure there are some and actually do good things using their own money instead of tax dollars, but the cynical side of me says the majority are doing it merely for marketing and accounting purposes . On the same token a lot of philanthropy occurs because we have politicians who want to completely defund everything that helps anyone from lower social statuses and instead give all the breaks to the privileged class and make it into a world in which only those with connections get anything from our tax system other than a bill. 
That's an argument for another day and topic, but the bottom line is we as a society ought to be doing everything we can to benefit every citizen regardless of social status, race, religion, national origin, etc. 
Well there's my rant of the day that I'm sure will ruffle more than a few feathers. I'll get over it..  

What Fred said. It’s not a tax credit, it’s an income deduction.