We’ve just passed through tax time again. (Unless, like me, you live in one of several states ravaged by recent extreme weather events brought on by climate change. In that case, you can wait until October.) It’s also that moment when the War Resisters League — slogan: “If you work for peace, stop paying for war” — publishes its invaluable annual “Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes” pie chart and publicizes a series of Tax Day events nationwide.
For many of the rest of us, it’s time to pat ourselves on the back for the charitable donations we made to tax-deductible organizations in 2022. Time to pat ourselves on the back for being clever and generous enough to “do well by doing good,” right? Time, perhaps, to wonder why, even when we give to organizations seeking radical change, the IRS still rewards us with a tax deduction. Do the feds really support organized opposition to, for example, the military-industrial complex? Or is there more to the story of what my students sometimes refer to as the “nonprofit-industrial complex”?
— source tomdispatch.com | Rebecca Gordon | Apr 20, 2023