Monies donated to charity are also tax-deductible in US, and as a result the nonprofit sector is well-organized in terms of public outreach and so forth. One of the minor culture shocks I experienced coming to the US (from the UK) was the variety of billboards, radio, and TV ads encouraging people to donate their car, or boat, or whatever to this or that charity. At first I wondered why so many different charities were involved in giving cars to poor people, until someone explained that it was because you could (then) deduct the general market rate for the make and model of car involved. Nowadays they require more detailed documentation, eg the nonprofit has to give the donor a copy of the bill of sale within 30 days so that the donor knows how much to deduct. Turns out that some generous souls were inflating the size of their charitable donation on the tax forms in order to reduce their tax liability.

I also can't help noticing that some people who extol the virtues of religious giving are strenuously opposed to any expansion of government services, and seem to consider the whole idea of government taxation an intolerable confiscation of their money and thus an infringement upon their liberty. Such folk don't buy into the notion of a secular social contract between the state and the citizenry, and I often wonder if it because they see the state as being in competition with the religious establishment.