From the 2026 budget audit
State-funded charity: who chooses which good causes get your taxes?
830 million forints distributed to charitable organisations as organisations — allocated by political officeholders, not by a competitive or need-based process.
About 208 Ft per taxpayer per year — 830 million Ft total — to charities whose selection cannot be traced to a transparent, need-linked formula.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: charitable organisations with a budget-line income they did not earn in a competitive market for donations. The unseen: the voluntary donors who would have allocated this money by their own judgement had it not been taken first.
Objection
"Charities do work the state cannot — they need some stable public funding to survive."
Answer
Charitable work survives on voluntary donations, and in Hungary much of it does. A charity that requires a state budget line to operate has replaced voluntary giving with compelled transfer — it is no longer purely a civil-society institution. The three-year phase-out gives the organisations time to rebuild a voluntary base; the social services they deliver are available for funding through the need-linked per-capita channel.
Share if you think generosity should be voluntary.
The analyst's verdict
Support for organisations carrying out charitable activity
Rationale
The same mechanism and the same reasoning as the line above: a discretionary grant to charitable organisations as organisations, rather than need-linked funding of the service.
Transition mechanism
Phased out over three years at roughly 277 millió Ft per year to protect organisations that have planned around the transfer.
Affected groups
Charitable organisations currently receiving this discretionary grant, who must rebuild on voluntary funding; the individuals they serve, whose social needs are addressed through the retained need-linked per-capita channels.
Free Society Institute
Support independent analysis
Our research is free, open, and unsponsored. If you find it valuable, help us keep it that way.