That Philanthropists’ Begging Letter To The Nev Filter In Full

Nev, sir – It may come as a surprise to your readers – and indeed the government - to learn that the government was, in ways which it is regrettably beyond the scope of this letter to describe, making progress in encouraging us to pass more of our loot through a charity. The insane proposal in the Budget to cap tax avoidance is nothing less than a full-scale war of extermination on philanthropy that would deter Our Good Lord Himself, if He hadn’t been such a raggedy-arsed pauper. It is confusing and dispiriting, and we all feel really depressed. We urge the Prime Minister and the twerp next door to back off pronto, or we’ll switch our main domiciles to Monaco and then they’ll be sorry.

We choose to invest in charities for a variety of reasons: we may have been touched by an issue which reminds us that, tragically, we are as mortal as the unwashed herd; we may be amused to support the development, access to and pickling of Tracey Emin; or we may just wish to give something back to our own little community.

None of us view tax relief as a primary motive, cross our hearts and hope to die (although it may substantially increase our donations until the rebate matches the unspeakably communist 50% rate of income tax). But it is an important signal that the decision to use wealth to help ourselves is recognised, encouraged and supported by society. You see, we only do it to make people love us. Seems they don’t. Fuck ‘em.

All tax reliefs are granted on the basis that the money is spent on charitable purposes and, fortuitously, this happens to be rather liberally interpreted by the Charity Commission. And there are certainly some jolly deserving charities out there which receive precious little consideration from an ignorant and jealous Johnny Public, such as the old alma mater and our family trust funds.

The current proposal will undermine the motivation to give generously in order to receive generously, and we will deprive charities of much-needed funds if comrade Osborne doesn’t resign immediately. Bloody cheek.

Mr Thomas Huge-Rebates 

The Mrs Thomas Huge-Rebates Foundation

The Hon Agatha, Lady Tabitha and The Hon Bagatha Sainsbury

The 3-for-2 Guineas Trust

Mr Grant Relief

The High Society Donor-Charity-HMRC-Donor Circle

Sir David Schoolfees 

The Schoolfees Fund

Mr Miklos Ferens 

The Miklos Ferens (Eastern Europe) Laundry Network