Let’s (briefly) talk about tax (and donations to schools).

Following Monday‘s post I got to think about the other ‘advancement’ head of charity – education.

Now there is the whole controversy about whether donations that schools seek are really for extras and their role in an education system that is supposed to be free. And there is the thing about decile funding that the government gives less to higher decile schools coz they can fund raise.

But if that ‘fund raising’ comes from ‘donations’ then the government again gives one dollar for every two actually donated. So the bigger the donation and the higher level of actual payment – the more the government gives.

None of which is recorded in the education budget coz it is an off the books tax expenditure.  So the schools with richer parents get more government help. Very progressive.

Probs not actually intended. More likely to just be an interface of separate policies and never actually thought through. Shame.

Now for those of you who are properly interested in the can of worms that is tax and charity stuff I’d recommend my friend CharitywatchNZ‘s blog. Not currently being updated as he has gone back inside (the bureaucracy) for a while. But still all good stuff.

Namaste