Nobody is obligated to give a dime to charities. The amount of money somebody gives to charities it not something I use to evaluate that person at any level.

Wanna give away the farm, fine with me. Don't wanna give a dime, fine with me. Anywhere in between, fine with me.

This is how the rich keep getting richer. Politicians are the biggest hippocrites.

I find it interesting with all the controversy about Obama's pastor, that the simple religious concept of tithing (10% of your income donated to the church), is not practiced by him. After hearing from him how important and linked he is to his pastor, one might expect financial support in the church's outreach to those in his own community. But, then again why use your own money when you can convince others to give theirs.

Tell me the number of the law that requires you declare what you give to your church on your income tax return.

I've never deducted my religious giving. Not a nickel of it. It creeps me out that religious donations can be deducted. That's satanic.

I gave less than 1% to charity last year... and that doesn't make me any less capable of injecting change into social/economic problems. It's a difference of approach... I think one of the things that Obama has learned (and it's one of the tenets of his platform) is that throwing money at problems (or wars) never solves anything. It just plunges yourself (and others) into a recession and devalues the donation you made in the first place. If any effort is to mean anything, you've got to get behind it in mentality and volition. You can't just wish it away with money... that money never appropriates they way it's supposed to anyway.

"It creeps me out that religious donations can be deducted. That's satanic"

That has to be one of the stupidest things I've heard anyone say in at least a day or two (I can't go too far back after Clinton's comment about ducking sniper fire).

Any gift to a qualified and registered not-for-profit can be deducted from income. The only reasons I can think of not to deduct are if you are not itemizing or just flat out lost your receipts. I think most churches give you a statement at the end of the year as it provides encouragement to continue giving.

GREAT COLUMN.
RIGHT ON.

What a stupid article!

This didn't compare anything to other politicians in the race. How much did the Clinton's give? How much did the McCain's give?

What about the Bush family?

I just think that this article is an unfair judgment if it isn't compared to other politicians (or the average American). This is an obviously biased anti-Obama article.

I'm kind of surprised it passed the editors, to be honest. Biased political articles on a blog about stocks is just bad form.

Mr. Katsman is clearly on the Hillary bandwagon. I wonder what his connection is??? His concession that the Obamas "upped their giving A BIT in '05-'06" is simply false.

According to the WSJ, the Obamas donated $240,000 to charity in 2007 and $140,000 in '05-'06, which was generous according to their means.

In stark contrast to Obama, when is Hillary going to finally (1) open up her TAX RETURNS of the past decade (2) make public the list of her EARMARK recipients (she was one of the largest donors of taxpayer funds through earmarks), (3) reveal the contributors to the multi-million dollar CLINTON LIBRARY and (4) disclose what she and Bill got from the wife of their "angel" Mark Rich, the multimillionaire FUGITIVE AND CONVICTED TAX CHEAT that Bill pardoned on the eve of his leaving office??? NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL DIRT!!!

I say we judge everyone, especially presidential candidates, solely by their tax returns.

Hampton - blogs don't have editors. This is why you see pieces like this, the writer taking a small piece of information, providing no relevance, and then correlating otherwise unattributable traits to someone the writer despises.

"That has to be one of the stupidest things I've heard anyone say in at least a day or two (I can't go too far back after Clinton's comment about ducking sniper fire). ..."

Nice try. I don't care that it is allowed. My point is that you are not required to deduct religious giving, and it has nothing to do with keeping receipts.

I don't want avoiding federal income taxes to be a motivation for my religious giving, so I've never deducted it. I do deduct donations to the United Way, etc. I do not believe money given to ones church should be deductible from income for federal income tax purposes. It smells like rotten eggs.

There are actually a lot of people like me, and you won't find us by looking at our tax returns.

Dan,

Great point! And with that logic we can justify reducing entitlements such as social security, medicare, food stamps, welfare and on and on since throwing money at the problem doesn't seem to be helping. Then we could cut taxes!

It's Obama's right to give as much or as little as he deems appropriate. I think the point is just that his record of giving is incongruent with much of his rhetoric. He seems to have several ideas for how to spend other people's money.

Personally, I consider my taxes to be equivalent to a charitable contribution.