Comments
Another possibility could be asking your employer to set aside some of your pay in a fund you can direct. (I intend to make a post on this soon.)
Another possibility could be asking your employer to set aside some of your pay in a fund you can direct. (I intend to make a post on this soon.)
I suspect there are some tax issues there? In the US employer donation matching is common, and my previous employer gave all of its employees a sum they could choose where to donate, so that is presumably also fine. I'm less sure you can do what you're proposing, however, without it counting as income.
Can you do 100x donation matching? Then the deadweight loss is minimal in comparison.
The bit that I would expect to be tricky is trying to let employees choose how much of their pay they receive through this kind of "choose where we donate money". If you're just trying to let every employee direct a certain amount of funding, that's already fine.
Yes that was a concern. Will talk this point over with people before I post this
If the employer set aside the funds in a donation pot which you had no/minimal control over that'd probably be more likey to be legal. (Eg if staff voted where the funds should go)
For what it's worth: I stopped doing salary sacrifice at a well-funded EA org mainly due to worries about fungibility.
I switched to (mostly) trying to seed fund and encourage individuals that other EA funders might miss, or would be less able to credibly and helpfully encourage.
This has gradually come to seem less useful as EA Funds has been growing and the FTX Future Fund started the regranter programme.
Nonetheless, my guess is that at least 1/3 of the value on this approach comes from encouragement and raising aspirations. So I'm keeping going with this for now.
Another consideration in the legibility space is how permanent you expect your time working for a nonprofit to be. If you are returning to industry and negotiating pay, they will not care about how much you theoretically could have been making, they will care about what you were actually paid.
That doesn't sound right to me? Transitioning to a non-profit means a significant pay cut even if they don't formally pass up pay. If I were to return to tech, my current salary is low enough that I wouldn't expect it to affect our negotiations at all? And if instead I was being paid 2/3 of what I'm currently paid, it's still wouldn't have an effect?
If you're trying to maximize your income in standard jobs in the private sector you want to get multiple offers at the same time and have them bid against each other. In which case it doesn't matter much what your previous role paid?
(And this is ignoring that in 22/50 states [EDIT: 15/50] it's now illegal to require salary history)
I think that's right for someone who has an established private-sector job history. If someone is starting off in the non-profit sector but thinking it may not be permanent, salary could be seen as a proxy for level of responsibility in the non-profit role that is difficult to manipulate / embellish.
I think the things you bring up a reasons why the effect that I mention might not be as strong as one might naively expect, but that's not a reason to expect that it wouldn't have an effect at all.
in most of the states you mention, the ban only applies to the state itself, not to private employers or only to specific cities.
Thanks for pointing that out! I count 15 states (AL, CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, ME, MD, MA, NV, NY, OR, RI, VT, WA) where the ban includes private employers and is state-wide.
Some may also want to consider how passing up pay will affect benefit eligibility. If you can lower your income to 200% of the poverty line, under current Covid-related policy, you can get the maximum SNAP benefit for your household size in many states, including Massachusetts. That in turn entitles you to other benefits like broadband and school meal subsidies.
All together, a family of four in MA can gain about $12,000 per year by getting their income just below 200% of the poverty line ($55k). That's based on my nonprofit's free open-source app, PolicyEngine US; here's a graph. The application process and purchase restrictions can be annoying, but many online grocers now take SNAP and it's tax free.
I'd add:
TL;DR: Who is vetting this org? Are you able to pick a good org to work for with lower pay or would your rather have a funder vet orgs and you just go and work for one of them?
Specifically, I sometimes see people working for lower pay (or for free) for an org that brands itself as "EA" without doing what I'd consider reasonable vetting.
I do think there's added value in letting funders do centralized vetting, and if you work for less/free then you're giving up on some or all of that vetting.
To be clear, if you're think you're able (and more important: willing!) to do your own vetting then I won't argue with you - I'd only encourage you to do it on purpose rather than without noticing. (I specifically assume the author can do their own vetting, no argument there)
Maybe? On the other hand, as someone working within the organization (depending on your role, level, and involvement in strategy) you may have a lot more information about whether it is executing well and achieving its goals than a funder.
Yes, I definitely agree.
My bar is much lower: "if you considered for 3 seconds whether a funder is way more informed than you [and potentially decided 'no']", that's enough for me
The situation I'm imagining is more like a developer going to work for free on a project branded as "EA", trusting the CEO to know what they're doing, and having the project seem like an elegant solution to something.
This was great and really helpful, thanks for writing it!
This only works if there isn't some other organization you think would do more good with your money. People may overvalue their particular organization when they would be more objective in choosing among organizations at large.
Extending this thought, there's a consideration that attracts me - a kind of personal worldview diversification. To take the example of Nucleic Acid Observatory, I might not want to go all in on pandemic prevention by both working on it and directing my counterfactual donations to it through waiving pay. I might instead want to hedge and put some of my donations into, say, animal welfare (or neartermist global development, or what have you).
I'm not sure if this kind of personal hedging has strong objections though. E.g. maybe it's a strategy that only makes sense if you're maximising 'the chance that I do some good', but is in tension with maximising the overall good.
Since in effect this frees up funding for the kind of funder that funds the NAO, and those funders tend to be diversified, there is still some amount of diversification? See the complicated bullet on funding replaceability.
Oh true, I didn't think that bit through.
I think there's some weaker version that still applies, for two reasons. First because the money that gets freed up may only be freed up within a specific cause area of the funder. Second because even if the freed money goes back to the funder's general pot, it'd be distributed according to that funder's cause-area split. But if you think you've already put a lot into one cause area, maybe you'd want to push your donations more heavily in the direction of another cause area, rather than just deferring to the funder's split.
My usual reply to "convert taxes into donations" type arguments is that evading taxes is bad. I don't think it applies here as such, because the variability in pay makes it a bit unclear what the "right" amount of taxes is that you should have been paying.
However, I think the underlying reasoning still applies somewhat:
I still think both options you presented are acceptable. But this would change how you take into account the different uses of that amount of money when deciding between them. Ultimately, it looks to me like the disadvantages you listed now outweigh the advantages. Or at least like some point in-between would be better than going all the way.
Tax evasion is a crime. Tax avoidance—legally reducing your taxable income—is good and more people should learn about it. You shouldn't unnecessarily "compensate the state" for things you don't want it to do.
there's some amount - your donations - which is allocated according to your flavor of expected impact; and another one - taxes - that's allocated by democratically chosen representatives in your country
This is right, and you should just minimize the amount you allocate to the state, whose effectiveness is very low.
The relative value of taxes vs donations underlies a lot of EA thinking and doesn't get discussed much, so I'm glad you brought this up. I think it's important how one defines "evading taxes". If we grant the argument that "taxes are not your money" (which is plausible and appeals to me aesthetically), it's pretty critical to identify the "correct amount" of taxes which one owes. I might say the correct amount is whatever the tax authorities say I need to pay, which basically amounts to "whatever I can get away with". Or you might say a bunch of the normal loopholes aren't morally legitimate, and that the correct amount is "whatever your tax bracket says". Or if you're a tax protester, you might say one or taxes are not morally legitimate, and so the correct amount of taxes you owe is in fact less than the tax authorities say it is.
My point is, establishing how much money I owe in taxes (and therefore how much of my income belongs to the state) is as much a political question as it is a legal or administrative question.
In my opinion (and it seems you agree) Jeff's proposal is sufficient far away from what most people consider "tax evasion" that it doesn't really run into the problem you're identifying. But I occasionally see other EA proposals that look closer to "steal money to buy bed nets".
Yeah, I basically agree.
I think there are two orthogonal axes here - one of property rights and "stealing", and one of the comparison between your group's concerns and your own. And the view that my own concerns are more important on the second axis often comes together with a view about the first one, that says taxes are mine as long as I manage to hold on to them.
But here since (the vast majority of people would agree) Jeff's suggestion is ok on the first axis, I wanted to highlight that this doesn't cancel the need to ponder on the second one.
Sometimes even when you do steal, it may end up being fine to prioritise your own concerns - e.g. if you're a poor person stealing from a store to feed your family. On the other hand, we wouldn't want everyone to do this. In the same way that we can't sustainably help the world if we go live in a tent and donate 95% of our money, we also can't strive to stop paying taxes and redirect all that money to bednets - which would be analogous, but on the level of society rather than the individual. So we need to somehow still drill it into ourselves and our philosophy that it's important to pay taxes.
This problem is even more relevant in other EA contexts right now - where a lot of the movement's money comes from the profits of companies in tax havens (the Bahamas). And this (rightfully) doesn't look good to an outsider. [Edit: this was claimed as false about FTX, and I may very plausibly indeed be wrong]
I recently switched from earning money to donate to doing something directly useful. I think this work is very important (or I wouldn't have switched!), and if I were still earning to give it's the kind of work I'd be excited to fund. I also think this about Julia's work; what should this mean for our donations?
We've been donating 50%, and say we decide to continue doing that in future years. Let's say our employers are willing to pay us a combined $300k, so we donate $150k and have $150k left over. Then we pay $51k in taxes and our employers pay another $22k, for a total of $73k in income taxes. This leaves us with $99k for ourselves:
| Donate 50% | |
|---|---|
| Income | $300k |
| Donations | $150k |
| Employee-paid taxes | $51k |
| Employer-paid taxes | $22k |
| Post-tax post-donation pay | $99k |
Since I'm equally happy for us to donate $1 as for either of our employers to keep $1, however, another option would be for us to ask for lower pay instead of donating. Let's say we want to keep the same $99k in post-tax post-donations pay; what does that look like?
| Donate 50% | Reduce Pay | |
|---|---|---|
| Income | $300k | $130k |
| Donations | $150k | $0 |
| Employee-paid taxes | $51k | $31k |
| Employer-paid taxes | $22k | $9k |
| Post-tax post-donation pay | $99k | $99k |
Our family is equally well off in the two cases, but in the donation case $33k goes to taxes that would otherwise go to something much more valuable. That's 11% of what our employers would be willing to pay us, and 1/3 of our post-tax post-donation pay. This happens because while donations are "tax-deductible", that's only for Federal Income Tax (10%-37% in brackets). Social Security (12.4%), Medicare (2.9%), and State (5% for MA) taxes are all calculated on pre-donation income.
While this is more efficient, there are some reasons why this might not be a good idea:
This only works if there isn't some other organization you think would do more good with your money. People may overvalue their particular organization when they would be more objective in choosing among organizations at large. People have floated the idea that EA should have a norm against donating to your employer.
Your employer might say they are willing to pay the larger amount, but if it actually came down to it they wouldn't follow through. Perhaps they think they can get someone else to do the job for closer to what they had been paying you, or they just don't have the funding. One way this could happen is that they would have been fine with the larger amount initially, but over time that no longer makes sense for the organization, and no one notices because money that doesn't need to be spent feels less like real money. The more pay you are waiving, the larger an issue this is.
If you know you're costing your employer less, you might hold yourself to a lower standard in your efforts. This would be ignoring major costs like you taking a spot that could go to someone more productive, and the way many top organizations are primarily constrained by management capacity, but I could still see someone falling into this.
If you've pledged with Giving What
We Can, it was initially not clear to me whether a voluntary and
easily-reversed decision to waive pay would count. I wrote to
[email protected], however, and they said
it would.
It's less legible. When you donate to a 501(c)(3) you get a tax receipt ("no goods or services were provided in exchange for your contribution" etc) and have something clear to list publicly. But if you instead waive pay the best you can do is write something up explaining what you're doing and get a document from the organization confirming it. It's a lot less clear! Some situations where this could be a problem:
In trying to get a mortgage or other loan: "I understand sir, but for the purposes of this loan application what matters is what they've actually been paying you."
In media: "These so-called 'effective altruists' claim to donate 50% of their income, but we've reviewed their finances and they aren't actually donating anything."
Social Security tax, unlike the other taxes, is nominally to fund your retirement. Paying less here means lower Social Security benefits later: how worried should we be about this? Even if we assume that Social Security is still paying out in full when you're ready to retire, however, it's far less efficient than investing in index funds: it only takes ~$3k/y in 401k contributions to give a higher retirement income than $19k/y in Social Security taxes [1].
Money going to the government as tax pays for a lot of valuable things. But it's nowhere near as valuable as funding for, say GiveWell's top charities, or other organizations that are at least as beneficial.
As with taxation, if you have other means-tested things in your life such as college or affordable housing these two cases are very different.
If your opinion of your organization decreases, requesting to resume being paid your full salary could appear as disloyal or not being a team player. I would hope that this would not be a concern at the kind of organization I'm talking about here, but an organization can be excellent in terms of its impact on the world while still having harmful aspects to its internal culture.
It makes discussions around raises confusing. Let's say your organization would be willing to pay you $100k, but you actually only take $75k. After some time, in which you gain experience and become more valuable to the organization, you think they should be willing to pay you $120k, of which you would take $90k (still 75%). Asking for a raise when you essentially have the power to give yourself an equivalent one is very strange!
It's much harder to pressure people into making donations than it is into accepting lower pay. For example, imagine funders start caring about employees waiving pay, treating it as a signal of how confident employees are in the organization's performance. It would be really easy for this to filter down into pressure on individual employees and build a harmful culture. (To be clear, I don't think funders should do this. Not only does it have harmful cultural effects, but it isn't even a strong signal: since this is uncommon behavior, it tells you much more about whether the organization has a culture of pay waiving than it does about employee views.)
I've laid this out as two options that leave you equally well off. You could instead set it up as two options that have equal altruistic value but where one leaves you with more money. While I agree one could do this, I don't think we should.
While don't have the full funding details for either my work or Julia's, my impression is that they are the kind of project that multiple major EA funders (ex) would be happy to support. This means that the effect of donating to them is pretty tricky. Whichever funder would otherwise be covering this part of their funding gap would instead have more money available for their other grants. Since I generally like the way these other EA funders allocate their giving, I think this is fine. Note that this complexity around funding replaceability isn't particular to donating through forgone pay; it's just as much of an issue if you donate money.
There is some amount of undercounting here: if someone is considering giving up a $400k job earning to give to do direct work at $200k they're essentially already contemplating donating 50% in foregone compensation. If they then feel like they would need to waive additional pay they may not be willing to make this switch, even if it would be much more impactful than continuing to earn to give. This isn't an issue with waiving pay, however, but instead is about whether we should have a culture where EAs who are taking pay cuts to do directly valuable things also donate.
I think these are all real concerns, but an option to save your organization 1/3 of your take-home pay is very significant. I currently think that waiving pay would make sense for most people who would otherwise be donating to their employer or another organization whose funding trades off against their employer's. I'm less sure about our family in particular, since we've generally prioritized legibility more highly due to being given as examples in various situations. I'd be very happy to read additional objections, or reasons why the objections above go farther than I'd thought.
[1] Here's a simple model, all in 2022 dollars. If you earn $150k,
you (and your employer) pay $19k/y in Social Security tax, and you get
$36k/y in from age 67. If you put $2.8k/y into index funds starting
at age 22, earning 6% real returns, you can withdraw $36k/y at 67 for
your whole retirement.
My personal view is that targeted small-dollar political donations (which large donors cannot simply fill, due to campaign finance laws) are likely to be vastly higher value on the margin than corresponding-sized (equivalent size plus tax savings) non-political donations to organizations that large donors can fill, insofar as such targeted political opportunities arise. So if I was in the situation you're describing, I'd accept the higher salary with the intention of donating to such political opportunities when they arose. Of course, this logic is specific to a particular kind of donation opportunity, and won't generalize to most areas that EAs currently donate to.