
Japan's Hometown Tax - gwern
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2018/10/19/japanese-hometown-tax/
======
Balgair
I LOVE this idea! Here in the US, it could really help out rural communities.
The best part is that it is 'free' to everyone; you've already paid the taxes.

Small communities could, and do, organize festivals based on local culture:
Trout fishing in the summer, Ice festivals in the winter, Duck races in the
spring, etc. They get people interested in some aspect of the community, be it
a festival, music, the climate, foods, textiles, history, etc. Either way, the
community sends stuff out or brings people into itself for 'free' as the taxes
have already been paid.

This incentivizes these small communities to plan for the festivals, to clean
up the streets, to pay people to make it look nice, get a bunch of bunting
ready for the 'homesick' tourists that they sent AirBNB vouchers out to.
People come in, spend money at the diners and in the shops, at the mechanic's
when a tire goes flat. There are _knock-on_ effects that the community feels.

Or it incentivizes them to get better at food/textile/goods production. Maybe
they make a mean steamed-ham. They get better at curing and steaming the hams,
they find a niche in the market they didn't know they had, they hire more
workers to fill the niche. City-slickers get some steamed-hams, realize that
they don't have any rolls to eat them with, and go out and buy some. Again,
knock-on effects.

For communities that are _very_ small, they could run mini-lotteries, like one
during a Wednesday night bowling league. You sign up, they draw a name out of
a hat, you get 10% of everyone's tax money that entered (something less than
the 30% that the community would have sent out).

Communities that don't participate still receive taxes as before. Some that
choose to spend these taxes _are_ taking a chance, true. But, I feel that this
'priming of the pump' is fantastic idea. It gets people moving about, making
things, buying meals and plane tickets.

~~~
gph
Did you read the entire article? It's not really 'free to everyone', it's not
like it's magic money. It's more like a transfer of tax revenue from Tokyo to
rural communities, with a bit of a kickback to the tax payers.

And while your vision sounds nice, the end of the article made it sound more
like it's become a race to the bottom with most rural towns offering the
maximum amount allowed in gift vouchers which people resell for cash.

So it's mostly just a convoluted tax distribution/credit system in a lot of
ways. And as much as it would be nice to have something like what you wrote,
it would be near impossible to set out rules such that it didn't become
another cynical race to maximize profits by attracting 'donors'. Even if you
outlawed gift cards, there's always going to be some good/commodity a
community can offer that will hold a liquidable cash value.

~~~
tlear
I use the system and while yes you can do what you describe it is usually not
really worth it. There is a limit on it that is not that high and it is more
fun to just grab different fun things. I ended up using it for lots of high
grade meat, sake

~~~
brianpgordon
1.5% of your _gross_ salary isn't worth it?

~~~
tlear
Difference between maximizing return on it and just getting whatever you want.
Effort of reselling vouchers etc

------
_0nac
I see a lot of moaning about inefficiency here, but here's a point of
comparison. During the Bubble years in the late eighties, when many rural
areas were feeling left out, there was a scheme to give basically every
municipality in Japan a large lump sum of money ($10m?), no strings attached,
except that it had to be used for building something new.

This, as you might guess, was an _incredible_ waste of money. Many podunk
towns built flashy "multi-purpose halls" (多目的ホール) perfect for all those
symphony orchestras just dying to perform in the middle of nowhere. More
memorably, the town of Utazu, Kagawa purchased a solid gold toilet...!

[http://english.cri.cn/6909/2010/09/09/1901s593626.htm](http://english.cri.cn/6909/2010/09/09/1901s593626.htm)

[https://www.emporis.com/buildings/191596/gold-tower-utazu-
ja...](https://www.emporis.com/buildings/191596/gold-tower-utazu-japan)

------
resoluteteeth
Couching this in terms of Japanese culture is unhelpful in my opinion. The
return gifts probably wouldn't exist in the first place elsewhere, but
allowing them is simply a blatant loophole that various local governments have
cynically abused to increase their revenue and this is something that would
happen in any country.

The biggest problem is that some local governments are apparently giving
return gifts that have a value that's higher than the 2000 yen part of the
hometown tax that isn't tax deductible, which means that by opting in to
donating to these local governments you do slightly better than if you didn't
donate money in the first place. These governments are obviously trying to get
people with absolutely no local connection to send money purely for the gifts.

One option would be to set a limit on the value of the gifts, but there's
absolutely zero reason to allow the return gifts in the first place. The whole
reason for the first 2000 yen not being tax deductible is this is something
you are only supposed to do if you seriously want your money to go to a local
government, and allowing non-taxed return gifts defeats the intention of how
the system is set up. Having tax money go back into return gifts is also
ridiculously inefficient.

Unfortunately, based on the way the government is set up, rural votes have
disproportionate power, and for this reason the LDP has a tendency to pander
to rural interests, so they probably have no interest in eliminating the gifts
entirely. However, at least they recently announced that they are looking into
introducing legislation to limit the value of gifts (and ban the worst abusers
from participating entirely) in the next regular session of the Diet.

~~~
swolchok
> based on the way the government is set up, rural votes have disproportionate
> power, and for this reason the LDP has a tendency to pander to rural
> interests

Is there a Western government that _isn 't_ set up this way? You could write
this same blurb about the United States. I would be very curious to hear about
what happens when rural areas have political power consummate with their
population instead of with their land area or with the mere fact of their
historical existence. (For example, does it look less or more "fair"? Are
there unexpected consequences, like maybe further depopulation of rural
areas?)

~~~
resoluteteeth
It's actually interesting because in the US it's enshrined in the constitution
with the way the senate is set up, so it's not even viewed as a problem.

In Japan the central government isn't supposed to work this way and it is as
least viewed as a problem: the disparity in the power of votes is considered
unconstitutional, but the supreme court isn't willing to actually invalidate
election results (they made up a distinction between being "unconstitutional"
and being in an "unconstitutional state" which is not at all supported by
precedent (although it's a civil law country so technically there's no binding
precedent) or the constitution), so the ruling LDP does the absolute bare
minimum to act like they're trying to improve the situation so they can
pretend their doing something while actually dragging their feet as much as
possible.

Probably the main negative consequence of ensuring that all votes have equal
power would be to make it easier for the central government to ignore the
wishes of rural areas, but this depends on how the government is structured in
other ways.

In Japan, prefectures are relatively weak. For example, Okinawa recently
attempted to invalidate approval for filling in of land for the new US
military base because residents of Okinawa want the base out, but there's
basically zero chance that this will actually end up working because the
central government considers the base essentially for national security.

~~~
Frondo
Just one nitpick: the anti-democratic nature of the Senate (and the Electoral
college, while we're at it) is very much seen as a problem by a lot of people
living outside the sparsely populated rural states;

For those of us living in urban areas, we're simply vastly underrepresented in
federal government, and quite a few of us don't like it.

~~~
jki275
So you want to reduce the representation from the "fly-over states" so that
all elections and all federal government decisions are decided by California
and New York?

That's not going to work very well, and would lead to the secession of about
90% of the states, and then you'd find out that your urban paradises depend
absolutely on the rest of the country to exist.

The founding fathers set up a pretty good system, and they specifically did
not set up a democracy for a whole bunch of relatively obvious reasons.
Straight democracy doesn't work.

~~~
Silfen
You should extend more generosity to the point GP makes. You can believe in
adjusting the system so that representation is more equal without doing away
with the protections for small states. For example, you can greatly increase
the size of the House. It's the original first amendment!
[http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/its-
ti...](http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/its-time-to-
increase-the-size-of-the-house/)

~~~
jki275
The house already adequately represents the people, that's how it was
designed.

Expanding the house doesn't change representation.

~~~
Latteland
The house doesn't represent the people in the sense that the party that got a
significant majority of the votes has a significant minority of the seats
because of gerrymandering.

~~~
jki275
It's an interesting argument, but the house isn't a monolith that represents
the entire US as a bloc - it's a regional thing that represents individual
regions, and actually the vast majority of those areas in the US do not belong
to the minority party. Overall popular vote is not how we elect the house.

You can argue about gerrymandering all day long, both sides do it and have
done it since the beginning.

------
pgz
I always found this system very interesting, since the citizen can decide how
some of their tax money is spent (besides voting).

On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of my
taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy, mostly to be squandered by
corruption, clientelism, and organized crime.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
> On the other hand I have always lived in Northern Italy, and around half of
> my taxes go to the poorer regions of Italy, mostly to be squandered by
> corruption, clientelism, and organized crime.

Heh, funny that richer parts of the EU say this about Italy itself.

~~~
oh_sigh
Italy generally pays ~3-4 billion euros more into the EU budget than it
receives from the EU. Ireland is much more of a mooch than Italy

[https://english.eu.dk/en/faq/net-
contribution](https://english.eu.dk/en/faq/net-contribution)

~~~
daveoflynn
Ireland is, as of 2016, a net contributor to the EU; this year the country is
expecting to contribute 2.7bn€

Source: [https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ireland-s-
contri...](https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ireland-s-contribution-
to-eu-budget-expected-to-rise-to-2-7bn-this-year-1.3467403)

------
iscrewyou
What a fascinating concept. I would love to donate to my hometown and just get
some raisins back as a gift once in a while. But I could really see the idea
struggling through city council meetings because of the “well you could just
donate to the city and then just buy some raisins on the side?”.

And that’s a testament to how ideas can evolve overtime and be accepted which
otherwise would never be considered.

~~~
ajmurmann
I think the "but some raisins in the side" thing wouldn't happen, since it's a
opt-in system and it's in the interest of the town to keep the relationship up
and stay on your mind.

------
eigenspace
That was a fascinating read! I love when things like this happen and some new
emergent behaviour appears that was unexpected.

This did end up much better than most perverse incentive situations. In fact,
I'm not even sure I'd call this a perverse incentive but maybe I'm
musinderstanding the definition.

~~~
gwern
I consider it perverse because it incurs overhead in making the payments (eg
if you send a town $100, get back a gift card for $100, and cash it for $97,
that's $3 burned for nothing whatsoever than if they could've just transferred
$100 into your bank account or not taxed it in the first place), deadweight
loss in gifts (you don't value those hometown meibutsu at their market value
to other people), overhead from the incentivized marketing competition (ad
campaigns aren't free), and of course, the existence of a competition at all
means that the hometown which incurred the expenses of rearing/educating you
in the first place probably isn't going to get your tax revenue because they
don't offer anime pineapple rewards or whatever is hip at the moment. None of
that was intended nor is it useful. Interesting & amusing, but not useful.

(And anyway, I had to title it _something_. 'Japan's Hometown Tax' makes it
sound unutterably boring & technical, when the second-order effects are what's
interesting.)

~~~
thaumasiotes
It seems like the overhead of the system is paid for out of the tax savings
you get by participating in the program. As I understand it:

1\. Earn $2000 in Tokyo.

2\. Owe $200 to Tokyo.

3\. Donate $80 to Gifu.

4\. Receive $40 from Gifu.

5\. Liquidate gifts for $38.80

You just saved almost 20% on your income taxes. This presumably lowers the
deadweight loss associated with them. Does it lower it by more or less than
the 3% loss you take converting gift cards to cash or more appropriate gift
cards?

Don't double-count the 3% "overhead" of liquidating a gift card and
"deadweight loss in gifts"; those are the same thing:

> You really do get plums from childhood in your mail from your hometown (if
> you don’t optimize for cash equivalents).

Also:

> and of course, the existence of a competition at all means that the hometown
> which incurred the expenses of rearing/educating you in the first place
> probably isn't going to get your tax revenue because they don't offer anime
> pineapple rewards

With a legal cap on return gifts at 50% of donated value, this shouldn't be
the case. You can donate anywhere and you'll get exactly the same return; why
wouldn't you donate to somewhere you liked?

~~~
gwern
> You just saved almost 20% on your income taxes. This presumably lowers the
> deadweight loss associated with them. Does it lower it by more or less than
> the 3% loss you take converting gift cards to cash or more appropriate gift
> cards?

If any tax dodge which feeds money to third-parties to exploit a loophole
while doing nothing productive on its own is efficient, the problem is with
the tax rates in the first place. To say that an elaborate charade involving
indirectly buying plums or gift cards through tax rebates is 'efficient' and
'the overhead of the system is paid for' is quite a claim and not obvious, let
us say.

> Don't double-count the 3% "overhead" of liquidating a gift card and
> "deadweight loss in gifts"; those are the same thing:

I was referring to the non-monetary gifts like the products or grave visits.
As far as the gifts go, the gift cards are probably the least harmful as they
'only' have a 3% overhead involved in turning them (back) into cash (plus
whatever else goes into redeeming them, I suppose, in terms of
time/effort/hassle/delay), which is probably a lot less than most of the
others.

> With a legal cap on return gifts at 50% of donated value, this shouldn't be
> the case. You can donate anywhere and you'll get exactly the same return;
> why wouldn't you donate to somewhere you liked?

Because what are the odds that the place which incurred the expenses of
educating _you_ , out of the hundreds of competing muncipalities, large and
small, near and far, naive and sophisticated, meibutsu vs trips vs gift cards,
high or low, will give you exactly the right thing and win the competition,
and this will happen in almost every case and produce the same net flows as
simply sending the rebates to, say, people's registered birthplaces?

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Because what are the odds that the place which incurred the expenses of
> educating you, out of the hundreds of competing muncipalities, large and
> small, near and far, naive and sophisticated, meibutsu vs trips vs gift
> cards, high or low, will give you exactly the right thing and win the
> competition, and this will happen in almost every case and produce the same
> net flows as simply sending the rebates to, say, people's registered
> birthplaces?

I would estimate those odds as near 100%. I assume you can choose what
services you'd like to receive, simply because not everyone needs a grave
maintenance service -- and if you do need one, there is no way to get it
without specifying the particular grave you want serviced.

The OP explicitly states as much:

> A number of cities in Japan, including my adoptive home town of Ogaki, have
> made this offer: for a no-cost-to-you donation of $100 or more, the city
> will send someone out to any grave in the city limits. That person will
> clean the grave, make an appropriate offering, and send you a photo. This is
> a beautiful thing.

> Most of the gifts are more prosaic. Locally produced food is very popular.
> If you miss the taste of home, they’ve got you covered.

> Cities partnered with local firms to handle the e-commerce aspect, and
> eventually with platforms to bundle many different items into a single
> donation; think of it as a shopping cart you could fill with donated money.

This isn't a system where you have to buy a poorly-optimized bundle from the
town that happens to offer something close to what you want. You send a
donation and you can choose the return gifts you'd like to get back from among
the services that town offers. And in the steady state, all towns will offer
cash equivalents for people who want them, as well as more hometown-specific
services (which have a higher profit margin!) for people who want them.

------
noisy_boy
Very interesting. A scenario came to mind - a city sends back a local
delicacy. Then it notices that the number of donators is increasing. Looks
further into it and finds that the delicacy is very popular. Now it has
identified a product that it can independently promote and the city can earn
more revenue. So many possibilities :)

~~~
brazzy
Local food delicacies are a _major_ industry in Japan due to the formalized
culture of travel souvenirs, and it's pretty much guaranteed that anything
that could conceivably be promoted as one, already is.

~~~
gorpomon
On my first visit to Japan I went up to Takayama. I had never heard of Hida
beef before that visit, but now I've eaten enough for a lifetime.

------
CodesInChaos
Interesting how in some contexts kickback is illegal fraud/corruption, while
here the government of a developed democratic country openly engages it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kickback_(bribery)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kickback_\(bribery\))

~~~
resoluteteeth
It's also interesting in the context of how strict Japan's rules for election
campaigns are.

For example, a few years ago Justice Minister Midori Matsushima got in trouble
for distributing essentially worthless paper fans since they were considered
gifts, whereas paper pamphlets would have been okay, and she had to resign as
minister.

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-2799975/Japans-...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-2799975/Japans-
justice-minister-undone-cheap-paper-fan.html)

~~~
kbrosnan
It is about reach, a leaflet would reach one person. That person might talk to
a person or two about the information in the leaflet. One person with a fan
could be seen by many thousands of people on their daily commute.

~~~
resoluteteeth
That might be a reasonable basis for a rule in theory, but it's not the issue
in this case under Japanese election law. Something that has any value and
counts as a gift and therefore isn't allowed, even if the value is extremely
small.

There are other various other rules about campaign activity though (where/when
it can be performed).

------
Pxtl
Anybody else figure out the endgame when they saw the beginning?

"Oh crap, the hometowns just kick back a percentage to the taxpayer and
suddenly Tokyo is bankrupt - as the hometowns outbid each other in a race to
the bottom, eventually they lose too and it ends just being an expensive and
complicated tax cut".

Reality turned out even worse, with brokers skimming off a percentage.

I suppose it's fair. In Japan, registering yourself in Delaware for bullcrap
reasons isn't just for corporations anymore!

~~~
techman9
Can you explain a bit more more about why you believe Delaware is the
proffered place to register a corporation?

~~~
Pxtl
[https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/business/how-delaware-
thr...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/business/how-delaware-thrives-as-a-
corporate-tax-haven.html)

------
pessimizer
This sounds like a good way to redistribute funds, but at the cost of lowering
total revenue. If taxes are raised to make up for the often hometown-branded
but often highly liquid gifts, it will be fine, but 1) I imagine raising taxes
is going to be highly sticky, and 2) it's a flat, regressive tax, making it
either forced gift-buying for people who probably shouldn't be buying
themselves gifts or a government subsidy for the voucher-brokers.

If you're a Japanese politician, you should probably invest heavily in
voucher-brokers, then lobby for a rise in the tax.

~~~
gowld
I'd expect that the end-state would be that tax rates go up to maintain
desired revenue levels, the localities all bid up to the max amount of refund,
and the whole system works not quite as well as the day before the system was
invented -- except that a bunch of works gets expended on the useless
competition for funds, and the money distribution gets unfairly balanced based
on whichever locality has more clever marketing.

This is exactly counter to the concept government -- a system that should be
run as a monopoly ends up being full of waste due to competition with no net
improvement.

~~~
pessimizer
> the money distribution gets unfairly balanced based on whichever locality
> has more clever marketing.

You might be able to mostly solve this by automatically registering people to
a default hometown, and making it very annoying to change your registration.

That latter part might be doable by simply allowing the municipalities to
administrate their own hometown lists, so you'd have to contact your current
hometown to transfer your registration to a your new hometown. They'd be
economically motivated to make it as difficult as canceling a gym membership.

------
village-idiot
Classic case of "Tax Systems are Really Hard to Design" in action.

------
kposehn
This is absolutely fascinating, and (while Japanese culture has a number of
key differences to the US that make it work) something that we can learn a lot
from.

------
overdrivetg
Do you think some kind of bidding or voting on the maximum donation amounts
involved would make sense?

Ie, cities each vote on what they think a "proper" maximum reward would be,
then set it at the average.

Relatedly, I'm not sure why a supermajority of cities agreeing to limit gifts
_would_ be generally in their best interests:

1\. Lower status ("less popular") cities gain more donations via rewards

2\. I would guess status/popularity probably follows a power curve

3\. Therefore the long tail cities are able to flatten the distribution curve
by bidding their way up

4\. If they went back to a level playing field, they would drop back down the
curve, likely losing the (smaller but nonzero) overall financial boost gained
after bidding

Basically: if I am a small city with few "natural" benefactors, I can bid my
way up the curve (admittedly depending on the elasticity of "demand") such
that I gain more from more donations than I lose in larger rewards.

...unless the market today just drives everyone to offer the maximum reward?

Super interesting though, thank you for sharing this!

------
mjevans
Taxes automatically withheld by employers at the correct rate.

Yes please, this is how it should work for most of the population without
special issues.

------
vvillena
I really like the basic idea of being able to choose a town or region where an
alloted part of one's taxes will go. I live outside my hometown for business
reasons, so I'm paying taxes on the most well-funded region in my country.
Even if the government redistributes tax money, I'd love to have a small say
in where my money goes.

------
make3
Won't this degenerate to a pure bidding war, with people sending their money
to the town that gives them the largest fraction of cash equivalent returns,
transforming into only a tax reduction ? like, cities will bid to something
like ninety-something% cash equivalent, to the very limit of their margin
because it's winner takes all.

~~~
vxNsr
If you got to the end of the article you'd know that's exactly what happened.
The central gov stepped in and limited the quid pro quo gifts to 50% of the
donation amount. so now that's become the defacto standard for the return
"gift".

------
an4rchy
Super interesting policy!

I was thinking about why Tokyo doesn't do the same and reciprocate, thereby
competing with the smaller towns.

I do realize that Tokyo/(any other big city) wouldn't want to do this till the
number of people opting in hits a threshold within their city but maybe that
is the equilibrium point. Does anyone have any insight into that?

------
dorfsmay
There's an equivalent issue with city with large suburbs: companies in the
city core pay a lot of local taxes that stays within the city, but living in
the city is too expensive for 80% of the employees who live in the suburbs,
which cannot benefit from local taxes paid by the big companies.

~~~
paxy
The problem usually is that homeowners in the suburbs vote to keep their own
property taxes extremely low, and then blame corporations when there isn't
enough money to run things.

------
ajuc
Poland has something similar on regional (not city) level, it's called
Janosikowe (from Janosik - a Polish Robin Hood), and it's much less flavorful
than the Japanese thing, it's just a percentage of local taxes paid by the
richest regions to the poorest regions.

------
WalterBright
> it’s like running an e-commerce business with the special wrinkle that your
> customers are entirely price insensitive.

It's obviously very economically inefficient. The larger this thing grows, the
more it will distort and hurt the economy.

------
aurelianito
The mechanism used in Japan to compensate for the brain-drain should be used
worldwide.

------
rb808
The American system (& Japanese?) where schools are mostly funded by local
taxes is a root cause of inequality, poverty and unfairness in the USA.

Schools in Europe and Australia are funded by centralized government more
evenly so doesn't have this problem and dont need this donate to a region
system the article talks about. I think its much fairer.

~~~
rayiner
This is not correct. Half of all K-12 funding comes from state and federal
sources, which are disproportionately directed to schools in lower income
districts. There was a WaPo article a few years ago showing that, if all
funding sources are accounted for, most states show little difference between
funding for rich and poor districts, and many show poor districts are better
funded.

~~~
tvanantwerp
Equalizing the funding doesn't help much if you're still stuck going to school
based on where you live. If all the rich kids go to one school and all the
poor kids go to another, it's entirely predictable that you'll have vastly
different outcomes.

I once conversed with a friend in college who had grown up upper-middle class
and attended very nice public schooling. She told me that poor schools would
be better if the parents just got more involved with PTA, etc. I thought, what
an ignorant and privileged position to think that, yes, a single mother
working two jobs to make ends-meet has the time and energy to go to PTA
meetings! Locking kids into the school they are closest too only means that
they've got basically the same support structures as the local community. And
if the people of that community aren't in a position to help improve things,
then improvement doesn't come.

~~~
luckydata
That's the reason why sending more money to schools at some point doesn't do
anything to improve outcomes. It's much better to spend on safety nets like
single payer healthcare, unemployement support etc... so that parents can
actually get more involved with their kids' education.

But in Mad Max America only the strong survives so none of that will ever
happen. I hope the "winners" like the world they are creating because I find
it fucking horrifying.

~~~
Brockenstein
An unfortunate facet of the human condition is the idea of throwing enough
money at a problem will solve it. And that involves paying 10x as much for a
pound of cure compared to an ounce of prevention.

It is a darn shame.

------
chadlavi
this is really deeply fascinating!

------
paxy
> A few rounds of vigorous capitalism later

I love this line

------
sonnyblarney
It's a wonderful idea in principle. I love the fact that regions respond with
simple, relevant gifts.

I wonder if would be more appropriate if:

a) you could only give to 'where you went to school' and

b) regions could only respond with a nominal, non-cash gift, like a fruit,
flower, or some culturally relevant thing.

It would close the loophole, provide for meaningful tax redistribution _and_
encourage legitimate cultural contact between regions and the mega-centre.

Of course trying to get big business out of Tokyo might be an opportunity as
well, though that's a hard thing. Creating industrial clusters is hard, and
regions fight over it.

------
ElBarto
Considering the ups and downs of the Japanese economy this can also be seen as
a subsidy to boost consumption and economic activity.

------
dsfyu404ed
The system described sounds awesome. As someone in the US I would love to pay
a portion of my taxes to a state/town that isn't ruled by corrupt and inept
busybodies who's politics I disagree with. Getting a some % back or having my
corrupt dump of a state match the donation would just be icing on the cake.

10% losses due to middle men doesn't sound that bad when it gets you the
freedom to choose where your tax dollars are spent.

