Charitable Donations and Wealth: Effect of a Legal Reform of Tax Incentives on Regular Donors

The present study is the first large-scale analysis of tax incentives for charitable giving in Switzerland for constant donors. Using unique panel data of the entire Geneva taxpayers’ population from 2001 to 2011, which includes the rare information on individual wealth of donors, we analyze tax incentives for charitable giving: income tax deductions, focusing on the frequency of donations and the characteristics of regular donors. The latter are not primarily driven by the ceilings for income tax incentives, even though their donations rise over time. However, we find that wealth is an important variable characterizing the donations’ frequency based on linear regression estimates.