Actually, more on the subject of donating to political parties...

Actually, more on the subject of donating to political parties and whether it can be tax deductible or not, we need to ask the question about how 'public interest' is served, for either side.

Let's say I earn 1 million dollars a year (I wish). I also have a really bad accountant so I'm facing a tax bill of around $400,000.

Now, if I were to donate $200,000 to my favourite charity, I could reduce my taxable income to 800,000 and my tax bill down to $320,000.

That's $80,000 less tax collected so XYZ charity can receive $200,000 in funds. Now let's say its a fairly good charity like St. Vinnies, then nobody really has a problem with that.

The real problem emerges if the charity is something like the 'Remove all Science Textbooks from Schools and Replace them with Bibles' lobby group, which is also a tax-deductible charity. Conversely there could be a far-left example like 'Anarchist Eduardo's Anarcho-Syndicalist Burn it to the Ground Flash Mob Charitable Fund'. Charities not unlike these actually exist, and are also tax-deductible.