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富人如何利用慈善来避税雷·麦道夫的新书《第二阶层》指出，慈善捐赠是超级富豪用来避税的常见手段策略之一。
来源：
慈善纪事报
作者：
Ben Gose
文章《How the Rich Use Philanthropy to Dodge Taxes/富人如何利用慈善来避税》发布在慈善纪事报上。作者Ben Gose是慈善纪事报的高级编辑，负责报道领导力及其他相关话题。文章是对波士顿学院法学院教授雷·麦道夫的专访，围绕其新书《第二阶层：税法如何造就美国贵族阶层》展开。麦道夫指出，如同法国大革命前享有免税特权的贵族，美国的超富裕阶层通过资本利得税、遗产税和慈善捐赠的优惠机制，事实上成为了“免税的新贵族”。展开剩余94%The power imbalance between charities and the wealthy donors and foundations that support them leads to a lot of tongue-biting by the supplicants. And that leaves a relatively small group of people who know how the nonprofit world works and yet are independent enough to speak out about what they see as hard truths.
慈善机构与它们背后的富有捐赠人及其基金会之间，存在着明显的权力失衡，这使得许多“求助者”不得不“谨言慎行”。而这就导致了只有相对少数既了解非营利领域运作方式、又拥有足够独立性的人，才会直言不讳地说出他们眼中的残酷真相。
Ray D. Madoff, author of the new book, The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy, is one of these people. Madoff, a law professor at Boston College Law School, has carved out a side gig as a gadfly to big philanthropy, most significantly in 2020, when she and billionaire John Arnold drafted a legislative proposal designed to spur private foundations and donor-advised funds to give away more money faster.
雷·D·麦道夫正是这类敢于直言的人之一。她是新书《第二阶层：税法如何造就美国贵族阶层》（The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy）的作者，同时也是波士顿学院法学院的教授。麦道夫在学术之外，她还兼职扮演着大型慈善事业“牛虻”的角色。最引人注目的是，她在2020年与亿万富翁约翰·阿诺德共同起草了一项立法提案，旨在推动私人基金会和捐赠人建议基金更快地捐赠更多慈善资金。
It didn’t succeed.
但这项提案最终未能成功。
If Madoff advocates for an idea — like making the rich pay their fair share, or ensuring that charitable gifts actually get to charities in short order — there’s undoubtedly a lobbyist on the other side. She’s the rare expert whose proposals have been opposed across the ideological spectrum, including by the Council on Foundations, Independent Sector, and Philanthropy Roundtable.
如果麦道夫倡导某个理念，比如让富人支付应缴税款，或确保慈善捐赠能在短期内真正到达慈善机构手中，必然会有政府说客站在反对一方。她是一位罕见的专家，她的提案受到了各意识形态阵营的反对，其中包括基金会理事会（Council on Foundations）、独立部门（Independent Sector）以及慈善圆桌会（Philanthropy Roundtable）等组织。
The title of her new book refers to the nobility in prerevolutionary France, whose privileges included not paying taxes. The book looks at how America’s ultra-wealthy — including billionaire business owners and inheritors — aren’t subject to the same rules as the rest of us. That’s because the tax rules governing capital gains and estates — and yes, philanthropic gifts — have loopholes that allow the ultra-wealthy to dodge taxes in a way that income earners cannot.
她新书书名是指法国大革命前的贵族阶层，这些贵族享有诸如免税等特权。书中探讨了美国的超级富豪，包括亿万富翁企业主和继承者，为何不必遵守与我们其他人相同的规则。这是因为管理资本利得、遗产，甚至慈善捐赠的税法存在漏洞，使得超级富豪能够以普通收入者无法做到的方式避税。
The Chronicle recently spoke to Madoff about her book, which is out this week.
《慈善纪事报》最近就麦道夫上月出版的新书对她进行了采访。
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
本次采访内容经编辑调整，以精简篇幅并确保表述清晰。
慈善纪事报The Chronicle of PhilanthropyWhy did you write this book?
你为什么写这本书？
雷·D·麦道夫Ray D. MadoffIt was due to a frustration that I felt around conversations about taxing the rich. One of the most troubling subtexts is that the tax code is too complicated for people to understand, and therefore they shouldn’t bother. Or that the rich will always find ways to avoid taxes — therefore, you don’t have to get engaged with a topic that is boring and complicated. People can easily understand the problems with our system, and the system can be fixed to be more equitable. It’s not too hard.
这是因为我对关于向富人征税的讨论感到沮丧。其中一个最令人困扰的潜台词是：税法太复杂，普通人无法理解，因此他们不必费心去关注；或者是认为富人总能找到避税的办法，所以人们觉得没必要参与这个既无聊又复杂的话题。但其实，人们完全可以理解我们现行制度存在的问题，而这个制度是可以被修复并使其更加公平的。这其实并不难。
慈善纪事报The Chronicle of PhilanthropyHow does philanthropy fit into what you describe as the “tax-avoidance playbook”?
你提到的“避税策略手册”里，慈善捐赠扮演了什么角色？
雷·D·麦道夫Ray D. MadoffPhilanthropy is often presented as something that is a great deal to the public. But that description often underestimates the cost of philanthropy to the public, and overestimates the benefit. In terms of cost to society, our charitable tax rules provide a two-tiered system — one for people who have earnings and one for people who have wealth. And for people who have earnings, there are often little to no tax benefits from their charitable giving. When it comes to the wealthy, they play under a different set of rules — they play under the rules of the capital-gains benefit and the estate and gifts tax benefit, and together these provide extensive benefits, worth up to 60 percent of the donation.
慈善事业通常被描述为对公众大有裨益的事情。但这种描述往往低估了慈善事业给公众带来的成本，同时高估了其益处。就社会成本而言，我们的慈善税收规则形成了双轨体系，一条针对赚取工资收入的人，一条针对拥有财富的人。对于挣取收入的人来说，他们的慈善捐赠往往几乎没有税收优惠。而对于富人来说，他们适用的是另一套规则，包括资本利得税优惠以及遗产与赠与税优惠，两者合计能够带来巨大的利益，其价值最高可达捐赠额的60%。
慈善纪事报The Chronicle of PhilanthropyYou write that the federal government no longer tracks the cost of these benefits, so their precise value is unknown. But you argue that these philanthropic benefits — paying no tax on appreciated gains, and no tax on holdings that would otherwise be subject to gift and estate taxes — is costing the government “a lot more” than the annual cost ($64 billion in 2024) of the charitable income tax deduction. Why is that?
你写道，美国联邦政府不再追踪这些优惠的成本，因此其确切价值不得而知。但你认为，这些慈善优惠（对增值收益免税，以及对本应缴纳赠与税和遗产税的财产免税）给政府带来的损失，“远远超过”每年的慈善所得税抵扣成本（2024年约为640亿美元）。这是为什么呢？
雷·D·麦道夫Ray D. MadoffMost wealthy people are giving appreciated property, and so their tax benefits are significant — up to 60 percent — without any income-tax benefit. And one of the things that I write about is how they hide that fact from the public. Surprisingly, in the case of two of our most favored billionaires — Gates and Buffett — they do so explicitly, in a peculiar fashion. They go out of the way to tell the public how few tax benefits they’re getting, which seems rather odd. These are sophisticated people. They don’t ‘not know’ that they are getting these benefits. Why are they doing this?
大多数富人捐赠的是增值财产，因此他们获得的税收优惠非常可观，最高可达60%，而这其中并不涉及任何所得税抵扣。书中我也谈到了，他们如何向公众隐瞒这一事实。令人惊讶的是，就我们最受推崇的两位亿万富翁盖茨和巴菲特而言，他们甚至以一种特殊的方式刻意公开这一点：他们极力向公众强调自己获得的税收优惠少之又少，这看起来相当奇怪。他们都是精明的人，他们绝不是“不知道”自己正享有这些优惠。那么，他们为什么要这么做呢？
慈善纪事报The Chronicle of PhilanthropyThe book notes that wealthy philanthropists often think their own solutions to social problems are the best, but you point out that that view can lead to problems. What can we learn from one of the examples in your book — the efforts of the Carnegie Corporation and other early foundations a century ago to legitimize the eugenics movement?
这本书指出，富有的慈善家往往认为他们自己提出的社会问题解决方案是最好的，但你指出这种观点可能会带来问题。你书中的一个例子提到：一个世纪前卡内基基金会和其他早期基金会为优生学运动（译者注：指的是19世纪末到20世纪上半叶在欧美等国家兴起的一场社会思潮与政策运动，核心理念是：通过“改良人类遗传品质”，鼓励被认为“优良”的人多生育、限制或阻止被认为“劣等”的人繁殖，以期“提升人类整体素质”）合法化所做的工作，我们可以从这个例子中学到什么？
雷·D·麦道夫Ray D. MadoffIf we go back to that famous 2008 book by Bishop and Greene, Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World, that was a book that was very much of the era that thought it was appropriate to have the rich solve the problems of society because they are not limited by the slowness of government and other actors. It’s one thing if they’re spending their own money — but we are making a significant public investment in the donations of the wealthy. To just think that whatever they do is by definition ‘good’ is, to my mind, silly.
如果我们回顾比索普和格林2008年那本知名著作《慈善资本主义：富人如何拯救世界》，那本书在很大程度上反映了那个时代的观点，即认为让富人来解决社会问题是合适的，因为他们不受政府和其他机构行动迟缓的限制。用他们自己的钱去做是一回事，但我们实际上是在对富人的捐赠进行大量的公共投资。单纯认为他们所做的一切本质上都是“好事”，在我看来，是很可笑的。
The point about Carnegie is that people can make mistakes — and when they have the hyperagency bestowed by great wealth and tax benefits, those mistakes can have far-reaching consequences and cause much bigger problems than some of the slower methods of addressing problems where there’s room for correction.
关于卡内基，关键在于：人都会犯错。而当他们拥有巨额财富和税收优惠所赋予的超强行动力时，这些错误可能会产生深远的影响，引发的问题也会比那些解决问题速度较慢、但留有修正空间的方法所导致的问题严重得多。
慈善纪事报The Chronicle of PhilanthropyThe upshot of your book is that the ultra-rich, unlike other Americans, are able to opt out of the tax system. While that might be bad for the country — and unfair to the average American — we live in a time when charities are more dependent than ever on the wealthy for financial support. Would your remedies be good or bad for the nonprofit sector?
你书中得出的核心结论是：超级富豪与其他美国人不同，他们能够选择“退出”税收体系。尽管这对国家不利，也对普通美国人不公平。但我们生活在一个慈善机构比以往任何时候都更依赖富人提供资金支持的时代。那么，你提出的解决方案，对非营利部门来说，是好是坏？
雷·D·麦道夫Ray D. MadoffThere are two sets of proposals in this book when we speak about the issue of philanthropy. One is related to the tax benefits given to the wealthy — that is going to be of concern to other taxpayers who may be paying more in taxes and not having their charitable tax benefits subsidized to the same extent.
在谈到慈善事业这一问题时，本书提出了两套方案。其一与给予富人的税收优惠有关。这将引起其他纳税人的关注，因为他们可能承担了更多的税负，却没有享受到同等程度的慈善税收优惠补贴。
There’s a second question: What is the public getting for this money, for these significant investments of [federal] matching grants? And the problem is that our current tax rules are no longer ensuring that charities are getting any money at all.
还有第二个问题：公众从这些资金、这些大额的（联邦）配套赠款投资中到底获得了什么？问题在于，我们现行的税收规则已经不再保证慈善机构能够获得任何资金。
The donor-advised fund, of course, provides no assurance of the money getting to charity — and the existence of donor-advised funds undermines the payout rules required of private foundations.
当然，捐赠人建议基金并不能保证资金真正流向慈善机构。而且捐赠人建议基金的存在，也削弱了私人基金会必须遵守的支出规则。
慈善纪事报The Chronicle of PhilanthropyWhen it comes to philanthropy, what are the solutions?
谈到慈善事业，解决方案有哪些呢？
雷·D·麦道夫Ray D. MadoffThe most important solution is to reconnect charitable giving to charitable activities. The way to do so is to provide that money has to either go directly to charities that are engaged in charitable activities — or if it’s going to an intermediary, that there be a meaningful payout rule — so that people don’t get tax benefits for simply putting money aside with no requirement that it ever be spent. That is the single most important change that I advocate.
最重要的解决方案是将慈善捐赠重新与实际的慈善活动联系起来。实现这一点的方法是：资金必须直接流向开展慈善活动的慈善机构；或者，如果资金流向中介机构，则必须有明确的支出规则。这样人们就不能仅仅因为把钱存起来而获得税收优惠，而没有任何花掉这些钱的义务。这是我所倡导的最核心的变革。
As for the tax benefits for the wealthy, we should apply the same principles that we apply to income earners. So if we provide a 50 percent cap on charitable deductions for income earners, we could provide the same 50 percent cap for capital gains or estate and gift taxes. We would still incentivize charitable giving — but recognize that supporting the cost of government is also an obligation.
至于富人的税收优惠，我们应当对其适用与普通收入者相同的原则。因此，如果我们对普通收入者的慈善捐赠设定50%的扣除上限，那么对资本利得税或遗产与赠与税也可以设定同样的50%上限。这样既能继续激励慈善捐赠，也能明确承担支持政府开支的义务。
关键句翻译牛虻在英文中是指一个喜欢质疑、批评或不断刺激他人思考的人。在政治、社会或学术语境中，它常用来形容那些敢于挑战权威、提出不受欢迎但发人深省观点的人。那么牛虻的英文是什么？
Gadfly
n. 牛虻；虻虫；牛蝇
翻译、撰稿：丁适于（杭州市基金会发展促进会）
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