In France, If you make a donation to, say for instance, medical research it is possible to have a percentage of that donation refunded through your tax up to 66%
But only if you pay tax in France. If you are on a modest income then any donation you make is the amount you pay.
I have not seen anything explaining this on any donation web sites.
Any person making a donation is doing it from the heart, to help others, but I feel this rule is penalising people
with limited funds. To summerise, a person with a good income gets tax relief, a person with limited funds does not.
@renard don’t hesitate to add information to your earlier comments, to help me understand. But likewise, don’t expect everyone to agree with you when you post a topic on a discussion website!
I can’t see how @renard was expecting everyone to agree with him.
But I can see how his conclusion about tax refunds could have been reached.
If the situation is the same as in the UK charitable donations are tax exempt. So if a tax payer makes a donation then the tax paid on that income is due back to the donor (or - in the UK - there’s a thing called “Gift Aid” whereby it is added to the donation).
If someone who’s income is low enough makes a donation no tax was ever paid so no refund is due.
It is not that “a person with a good income gets tax relief, a person with limited funds does not”, even if it feels that way.
I don’t. I posted so people were made aware . Years ago I bought a central heating boiler and received some money back from the tax authorities. By cheque.
I was not paying tax then either. As the web site did not specify that only those paying tax would receive a percentage back from their donation it would be fair to think that would include me.
Yes and no!
I pay ´tax’ in the form of social charges on earned income but there have been several years (especially when the children were still attached to our household for tax purposes) that we didn’t pay any income tax.
And that was when I made and deducted charitable donations.
It was the same when certain home improvements attracted a tax credit, In my case I bought a wood burner and despite not paying tax, I received a credit.
Things may have changed re donations but worth investigating ?
I have just looked at the gouv.fr site and if you are making a French tax return you should include your donation and it will be deducted / credited depending on personal circumstances.
Hello Cat, that was what happened with me, bought a central heating boiler and received a cheque from impots. As someone else responded I didn’t make a donation to get money back. That isn’t the point. Its a kind of discrimination. Low income , bigger outlay compared to a person paying tax. That’s how I feel about it, right or wrong.
I have made another donation to the research charity so it didn’t prevent me from donating. Stroke research , as my wife suffered a catastrophic stroke.
The French system - you can count charitable donations against your tax paid, and get a reduction - is certainly far inferior to the UK GiftAid scheme, where the organisation itself gets the tax benefit itself, rather than the benefit accruing to the donor.
The more I think about it, the weirder the French system seems. It makes the giving of a gift transactional.
It’s a wider philosophical point, but does it echo the old RC church idea of indulgences?