That raises an interesting possibility. What if we made donating to a campaign itself taxable? Like, for every dollar you donate to a Congress critters or PAC, you donate $1 to the government.
Lots of reasons why this wouldn't happen (it's of questionable constitutionality under Citizens United and some other precedent), but it's fun to think about.
Gee, so now every time I rage donate $20 to some candidate or PAC I have to fill out a tax form? Like reporting stock trades is already enough of a pain. I really don’t want one more data point to copy and paste between screens.
I was kind of hoping we'd jail legislators who wrote law and dispensed federal power (eg:DoJ as-a-service for copyright donors) in response to major campaign donations.
It would also probably be catastrophic for small-donor campaigns and less impactful than you'd imagine for large-donor campaigns - i.e. basically a regressive tax.
Top US Congressional campaign donors are failing to pay billions in taxes