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Does every disaster require a new tax law?

January 26, 2010

TaxGrrrl is unimpressed with the retroactive deduction for contributions to Haiti disaster relief:

But I don’t think that changing the rules for Haiti make sense – anymore than they did for the tsunami. And not because Haiti isn’t important. I *get* that it is. But more because I think it sends a weird message about our tax policy. It says that today, we value those donations more than we value others.

Here’s some food for thought:

* 3.1 million people die of AIDS every year; 20,000 of those are in North America.
* This year, about 562,340 Americans are expected to die of cancer, at a rate of more than 1,500 people a day. Of particular interest to me since my grandmother died of breast cancer, an estimated 40,610 breast cancer deaths (40,170 women, 440 men) were expected in 2009.
* In 2008, an estimated 11,773 people died in drunk driving crashes.
* And an estimated 100,000 children in the US go to bed hungry on a typical day.

So, why aren’t we ramping up the donation rules for RED, Komen, MADD, or Feeding America? Are those causes just not dramatic enough?

Maybe we should make an "evergreen" disaster tax law that applies the retroactive Haiti relief to any disaster that takes up more than 6 minutes of each hour of cable news airtime each hour for 48 straight hours.

Tags: Haiti.

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