He has donated handsomely to charities
Over the past few years, Larry Page, the billionaire co-founder of Google and its parent firm Alphabet, has a pretty decent track record for charitable giving at the holidays. Through his foundation, he donated roughly $94 million in 2015, then increased the amount the next year by about $35 million and repeated the process. In 2017, Page's organization gave $180 million in Christmas gifts to several charities. According to Vox, Page has given his Carl Victor Page Memorial Foundation a total of $2 billion, much of it over the holiday season. However, that research claims that very little, if any, of that money is actually going to charity directly, but rather to something known as DAFs, or donor-advised funds, a practice that some say is being used to dodge financial accountability in charitable endeavors.
Federal law stipulates that when a philanthropist like Page establishes a non-profit foundation, it must donate at least 5% of its assets each year to avoid losing its tax-exempt non-profit status. Donor-advised funds are effectively "charitable checking accounts" that let whoever writes the checks disburse big lump sum payments over time. They permit such philanthropists to count such amounts towards the five percent limit while yet allowing them to "give away" money that they still have some control over.
Examining the financial contributions made by the Carl Victor Page Memorial Foundation in 2017 can help you understand how this works (the most recent for which tax records are available). The foundation donated less than $1 million in cash to charities in that year, including $800,000 to provide free flu vaccines for Oakland students and gifts of $1,000 to the American Cancer Society and over $100,000 to the New Venture Fund. Not exactly pocket change for most individuals, but a lot less than what a $3 billion foundation would have to distribute in order to maintain its tax exemptions.
