I’d love to donate to Lightcone ~5K€ next year, but as long as it’s not tax-deductible in France I’ll keep to French AI safety orgs as the French non-profit donation tax break is stupidly good: it can basically triple the donation amount and reduce income tax to 0.
I know that Mieux Donner, a new French effective giving org, is acting as French tax-deductible front for a number of EA organisations. I’ll contact them to check whether they could forward a donation to Lightcone and give an update under this comment.
My bad, I mistook Mieux Donner for an older organisation that was trying to setup this.
I checked online, and it does not seem that it’s possible to get the deduction for non-profits outside the EU even through a proxy, except if their action is related to France or is humanitarian.
I reached out to Lucie and we agreed to swap donations: she’d give 1000€ to AMF, and I’d give an additional[1] $810 to Lightcone (which I would otherwise send to GiveWell). This would split the difference in our tax deductions, and lead to more total funding for each of the organizations we want to support :-)
I think it’s plausible that Lightcone has great EV for impartial altruistic funding, but due to concerns about community dynamics / real-or-perceived conflicts of interest / etc, I don’t give to AI-related or socially-close causes out of my 10+% to effective charity budget. But I’ve found both LessWrong and Lighthaven personally valuable, and therefore gave $1,000 to Lightcone on the same basis that I pay-what-you-want for arts or events that I like. I also encouraged Ray to set up rationality.training in time for end-of-2024 professional development spending, and I’m looking forward to just directly paying for a valuable service!
Just got confirmation from Effektiv Spenden (with Mieux Donner input) that having this “fiscal sponsorship” setup does not change anything to whether a foreign org can receive tax-deductible donations from France.
Seems that no amount of indirection can enable Lightcone to be tax-deductible in France, short of actually having operations in France.
I’d love to donate to Lightcone ~5K€ next year, but as long as it’s not tax-deductible in France I’ll keep to French AI safety orgs as the French non-profit donation tax break is stupidly good: it can basically triple the donation amount and reduce income tax to 0.
I know that Mieux Donner, a new French effective giving org, is acting as French tax-deductible front for a number of EA organisations. I’ll contact them to check whether they could forward a donation to Lightcone and give an update under this comment.
My bad, I mistook Mieux Donner for an older organisation that was trying to setup this.
I checked online, and it does not seem that it’s possible to get the deduction for non-profits outside the EU even through a proxy, except if their action is related to France or is humanitarian.
Source: https://www.centre-francais-fondations.org/dons-transnationaux/
Alas, thank you for looking into it.
Update: Seems definitely not possible to get tax deduction in France for an American organisation.
This post from Don Efficace, the organisation which was trying to set up EA regranting in France, explains what are the constraints for the French tax deduction: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jWhFmavJ9cE2zE585/procedure-to-allow-donations-to-european-organizations-to-be
I reached out to Lucie and we agreed to swap donations: she’d give 1000€ to AMF, and I’d give an additional[1] $810 to Lightcone (which I would otherwise send to GiveWell). This would split the difference in our tax deductions, and lead to more total funding for each of the organizations we want to support :-)
We ended up happily cancelling this plan because donations to Lightcone will be deductible in France after all, butI’m glad that we worked through all the details and would have done it. update: because we’re doing it after all!I think it’s plausible that Lightcone has great EV for impartial altruistic funding, but due to concerns about community dynamics / real-or-perceived conflicts of interest / etc, I don’t give to AI-related or socially-close causes out of my 10+% to effective charity budget. But I’ve found both LessWrong and Lighthaven personally valuable, and therefore gave $1,000 to Lightcone on the same basis that I pay-what-you-want for arts or events that I like. I also encouraged Ray to set up rationality.training in time for end-of-2024 professional development spending, and I’m looking forward to just directly paying for a valuable service!
For now, it’s still unclear whether donations will be tax-deductible in France. I’ll contact Effektiv Spenden to check.
If they’re not, let me know by December 27th and I’ll be happy to do the swap after all!
Just got confirmation from Effektiv Spenden (with Mieux Donner input) that having this “fiscal sponsorship” setup does not change anything to whether a foreign org can receive tax-deductible donations from France.
Seems that no amount of indirection can enable Lightcone to be tax-deductible in France, short of actually having operations in France.
Just a message to confirm: Zac’s leg of the trade has been executed for $810. Thanks Lucie for those $810!
That would be great! Let’s hope they say yes :)