Research On American Corporate Charitable Donation Law

At the beginning of the19th century, there is no law in the United States that support charitable donation. Based on company profit maximization, the purpose of company’s existence is making the most profits. At that time, company’s charitable donation usually couldn’t get legal support and the court can only rely on some additional provisions to support such donations. In the20th century, charitable donation was put forward by the experts and the concept of corporate social responsibility, tax incentive mechanism as well as charitable donation decisions became hot issues. Gradually the civilization of donation process, legal supervision and relative attached terms become mature. Moreover, American tax incentive mechanism is more specific which offers us theory foundations for legal practice. American donation law has tax advantages and mature legal system and this is also the reason for my study so that we can learn something from its practice and better develop China donation law.The first part of the paper mainly focuses on introducing theory of American corporate charitable donation including shareholders’profit maximization and corporate profit maximization, theory of corporate social responsibility and system background of American charitable donation. Through combing these theories, the author can better elaborate charitable donation system. The second part of this paper mainly introduces American corporate charitable donation including corporate donation tendency, decision-making rights and restrictions on donating object, form as well as amount. Meanwhile, it also includes tax restraint mechanism, operating standards, balance of corporate interests and supervision of charitable donation. The third part of this paper mainly focuses on American charitable donation system’s advantages in tax, supervision, advertising and social responsibility. The last part of this paper tells how to learn something from American charitable donation. Hopefully this paper can do something to help better improve our country’s charitable donation law.