CUA Law Professor Roger Colinvaux was quoted in a Feb. 9, 2018, Politico article entitled "Charities brace for giving plunge in wake of new tax law" See below.

Charities brace for giving plunge in wake of new tax law

From: Politico
Date: Feb. 9, 2018
By: Brian Faler

Republicans have long sung the praises of charities, but groups including Catholic Charities USA, the United Way, the Jewish Federations of North America and the YMCA are worried the GOP's new tax law will cost them big.

As part of their bid to simplify the code, Republicans nearly doubled the size of the standard deduction, which means fewer people will bother itemizing their deductions - including a century-old break for charitable contributions.

The number of taxpayers taking the charitable deduction is projected to fall by more than 28 million, according to new figures by the official Joint Committee on Taxation. The decline will be especially steep among the middle class, with claims by those earning between $50,000 and $200,000 plummeting by 61 percent.

. . .

"That's just a really weird dynamic that we haven't seen before," said Roger Colinvaux, a former JCT expert on nonprofits who now teaches at Catholic University's law school. "What is it saying as a federal policy on charitable giving that the only gifts we're going to encourage or incentivize are gifts by the wealthy?"

Overall contributions will fall by between 1.7 percent and 4.6 percent, according to a study by Indiana University's Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, which translates to billions less annually.

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