The Routledge Handbook of Taxation and Philanthropy by Henry Peter, Henry and Giedre Lideikyte Huber

PART I
 Justification of tax incentives  
for philanthropy insights 

1

 THE PROPER RELATIONSHIP 
OF PRIVATE PHILANTHROPY 
AND THE LIBERAL 
DEMOCRATIC STATE
 The inquiry and the inquirers as the answer
 Rob Atkinson
 Introduction: back to which future, forward in which tradition?
 In public affairs, as in the humbler departments of human life, questions of ends and 
questions of means inevitably intersect. Disputes as to the former commonly pro-
duce more sparks than light, and more heat than either. If a man affirms that his heart 
leaps up at the spectacle either of a society in which the common good is defined 
by the decisions of a totalitarian bureaucracy, or of one – like, to mention only one  
example – the England of a century ago, where, in the unceasing struggle of indi-
viduals for personal gain, a conception of the common good cannot easily find 
a foothold, it may readily be admitted that no logic exists which can prove these 
exhilarating palpitations either right or wrong. One cannot argue with the choice 
of a soul.
 (Tawney, 1964)
 Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but are ravenous wolves. 
You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from this-
tles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.
 (Matthew 7:15–17)
 Taxation and Philanthropy (OECD, 2020), jointly produced by the OECD Centre for Tax 
Policy and Administration and the University of Geneva Centre for Philanthropy, surveys 
and assesses the tax policies that member states, donee states, and others might want to use to 
encourage both private philanthropic organizations and donations to those organizations from 
private individuals and for-profit entities. The point of this chapter is to identify and unpack 
several apparent paradoxes in the Report’s position, admittedly in an apparently paradoxical 
way. I argue that the Report is, in several important respects, at odds with the basic mission 
of the OECD itself; I mean that deep criticism in the most friendly possible way, and I mean 

The Routledge Handbook of Taxation and Philanthropy by Henry Peter, Henry and Giedre Lideikyte Huber