‘Tis the season for charitable giving, both because of the holiday spirit and the scramble for tax deductible donations before year’s end. America’s wealthiest households are responsible for a significant portion of overall charitable giving; itemizers, for instance, are responsible for 59 percent of all household giving. More specifically, wealthy donors come disproportionately from liberal “blue states,” where both income and property tax rates are higher — and thus the charitable tax deduction provides an extra incentive to give.

A White House tax proposal that would sharply limit the value of the charitable tax deduction could effectively target nonprofits in such states; it could mean that, by this time next year, charitable giving in these and other blue states may drop. As I spell out in a paper for the Manhattan Institute, this would jeopardize the income of some of the nation’s leading universities, hospitals and museums, a great many of which are headquartered in New York and California.