Dispensing Charity: The Deficiencies of an All-or-Nothing Fiscal Concept

In deciding the means, levels, and targets of taxation and spending across third-sector organizations, governments seeking
to increase social welfare should use fiscal concepts and indicators that can detect and grade the welfare consequences of
their decisions. On these terms, charity, as its meaning has originated and evolved in common law, is a deficient fiscal concept:
it is neither teleological nor gradational, and therefore can offer no guidance on how to design and differentiate the fiscal
treatment of third-sector organizations in ways that could increase social welfare. In general, the national governments of
Australia, Canada, England and Wales, India, and Singapore treat uniformly the third-sector organizations whose purposes comply
with the legal meaning of charity. In order to reform and differentiate that treatment with the prospect of increasing social
welfare thereby, governments should start by dispensing with charity as a fiscal concept.