Taxation and Social Enterprise: Constraint or Incentive for the Common Good

When governments use tax policy to motivate activities of social value, incentives are commonly targeted at non-profits or charities. For-profit businesses meanwhile are primarily seen by policy-makers as generators of tax revenue. Social enterprise, characterized by innovation and hybridity, can combine for-profit and social impact aims in a single entity. A tax system that anticipates a binary world of charities and capitalism may be unable to accommodate this, and so may function as a constraint on the contribution of social enterprise to the common good. This article reviews tax policy and the experiences of social entrepreneurs to explore this issue.