"It's the only form of compensation where a company can get a deduction without having to come up with cash".
It is not possible to cut tax rates and preserve the mortgage deduction without adding to the deficit.
"I can time when I generate my charitable deduction without having to release the money directly," said David Ratcliffe, director of the Merrill Lynch Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Management.
Robert Pozen, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and the former chairman of MFS Investment Management, said that approach was a logical way to reduce the cost of the deduction without discouraging people from buying homes.
You could get a $3 million charitable deduction without having to declare more than a small amount of your $2 million paper profit as a capital gain.
"People have to be careful about trying to take a deduction without a good, strong appraisal that supports it," says Thompson Mayes, deputy general counsel at the National Trust.
If you buy a share of Amazon.com at $10 and give it away when it's worth $100, you can get a $100 charitable deduction without ever paying capital gain tax on the $90.
When the boy billionaire gives $100 million of his Facebook stock to a newly formed public foundation he gets a $100 million charitable deduction without ever having to recognize or be taxed on his $100 million stock gain.
