By Suzanne Perry
Washington
Lawmakers and witnesses at a Senate Finance Committee hearing disagreed today over whether the charitable deduction is sacrosanct—or fair game for policymakers who are seeking to raise federal revenue or make the tax system more fair.
Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah—the committee’s senior Republican, who led most of the hearing—took the absolutist view. “There has been a charitable deduction in the tax code for nearly a century, and the proposals on the table would undo it,” he said. “This is not the area for experimentation by the federal government.”