Taxes
Wealthy Amass Record $121 Billion in Tax-Sheltered Accounts
- Money going into donor-advised funds outpaced grants in 2018
- Rich giving bigger slice of pie ‘not good for civil society’
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It’s better to give than to receive, the saying goes. But to give, receive an immediate tax deduction and then dole out charitable dollars at your leisure is even better, judging by a recent report.
More than $37 billion flowed into tax-sheltered donor-advised funds in 2018, according to the 13th annual report from the National Philanthropic Trust. That’s a 20.1% gain over 2017 and means a record $121.4 billion now sits in DAF accounts. The rate paid out to charities from those accounts, meanwhile, fell to 20.9% in 2018 from 22.8% in 2017, the first time in five years that the rate of growth in contributions outpaced that of grants.