Volunteering for Tax Refunds

What is more important, a persons money or time? I would argue without a doubt time. Everyone has the same amount of time and there is not good way to gain more. You can 'free up' time but you are still confined to 24 hours a day. And in the end time can be converted to money. You can do more with it.

So why is it that society rewards those who donate money more than it does those donating time? Giving a donation to a charity gets a person a nice tax break, whereas volunteering provides no real external benefits (there are internally motivated benefits).

Just as people receive tax benefits to donating money, they should receive a benefit for donating their time.

Now there are some difficulty with this. It is easy to know if someone has donated money. The IRS simply needs to follow the paper trail. Methods would need to be put into place to allow people to 'prove' how many eligible hours of volunteer work they performed. I'm not sure what the best answer to that is and would need to think more on the problem.

I just used the words 'eligible hours.' I did this because not all 'volunteer' work should count. This should not be too large of a surprise, not all 'donations' count equally. So what types of volunteer work are we talking about.

There is volunteer work like assisting at a soup kitchen, sorting food donations, and assisting at a nursing center. These amount of time people put into this type of work would at least be traceable with a bit of paperwork. They also provide a clear benefit to society.

But we can take it a step further. Lawyers could do work pro bono and doctors could put in time at free clinics. There is no reason to disallow people from using their talents and abilities to help.

This could also apply to public servants. Police officers, firefighters, teachers, ect putting in overtime could have this overtime go towards a tax break. Now this tax break would 'reduce' the government's income, but it would also reduce their operating costs in paying overtime in this example.

You could also imagine public works projects being arranged where the construction workers are earning tax benefits.

Overtime this could encourage more people to volunteer while helping to provide valuable service to those in need. As time progressed we could end up with a society more focused caring for their fellow man. Even if there are not any major societal changes made, at least some good is being done.

If you really wanted to take things to an extreme the government could start raising taxes and raising volunteer benefits. Employers could institute volunteer programs where their employees can put in extra time using the companies equipment and where the product is going to help society (the employer would likely get a tax break from this).

Volunteering can tend to help people's feeling of self worth and esteem as well as giving them a chance to hone or improve certain skills. So these types of tax breaks basically encourage people to improve themselves and their community around them.

So to summarize, offering tax breaks in return for volunteer work could have affect a great change on society. And even if it did not really change anything on a large scale, at least it is rewarding people who are doing good work. And if it does encourage more people to volunteer, even if they aren't changing the world, they are still benefiting personally.