It's January, I’ve been working on my tax return and the last two bits of data I had to find were (i) bank and building society interest; and (ii) charitable donations. At first I thought, wouldn’t it be symbolic if the latter turned out higher than the former, times being what they are? Then I thought, might we have here an interesting indicator?
As the data are officially collected it should be possible to compute an accurate average ratio (whatever it might be - any guesses?) expecting the interest earned to be higher than the formal recorded giving. And have a debate about what might be the optimum ratio, given other economic conditions.
Our government wants both, I assume, but I don't think they'd want to see a negative ratio. I know claimed tax relief is only a partial indicator of what is given, but the charitable sector could come up with a formula to account for unrecorded giving as well…
(And yes, it turned out that for tax year 2010-11 I had a negative ratio. I guess I'm just a spoiler).
