In a desperate attempt to halt New York legislators from enacting a new school choice law, teachers and their allies have resorted to misrepresenting what the proposed law would do.
Scholarship tax credit laws make donations to nonprofit scholarship organizations eligible for tax credits, rather than merely tax deductions. The scholarship organizations help low- and middle-income families afford tuition at the schools of their choice. The New York proposal, known as the Education Investment Tax Credit, would create a 75 percent tax credit, meaning that a $1,000 donation to a scholarship organization would reduce a donor’s tax liability by $750. Between the donation and the remaining $250 in tax liability, the donor would have given a total of $1,250.
New York teachers unions and the think tank they fund are trying to portray this arrangement as somehow financially benefiting the donors. Sadly, some media outlets have reported their spin verbatim, including WXXI News:
“It’s nothing more than a giveaway to the wealthy and corporations,” said Ron Deutsch, with the think tank Fiscal Policy Institute, which is in part funded by unions.
He says it’s also bad tax policy that could harm other charitable organizations. Under current laws, a million dollar charitable donation nets the donor just $22,000 in tax credits. He says education tax credit donors would get $750,000 back from a million dollar donation. Under a Senate version of the plan, donors would get $900,000 dollars back.
It takes real chutzpah to describe an arrangement that decreases the amount of money in the donor’s pocket as a “giveaway.” Deutsch falsely claims that the donors receive a “net” benefit, but the net is actual in the negative. The hypothetical donor that Deutsch describes could have paid only $1,000,000 in taxes, but instead chose to pay $250,000 in taxes and donate an additional $1,000,000. In other words, the donor would have saved $250,000 had she decided not to donate anything.
Some giveaway!
Scholarship tax credits expand educational opportunities for low-income families–the type that have been rallying in support of the proposal in recent weeks. Donors do not financially benefit from their donations whatsoever. Media outlets should not let themselves be used to spread misinformation to the contrary.
For those interested in learning how scholarship tax credit laws affect the lives of real families, watch the Cato Institute’s recent film, “Live Free and Learn”:
