It's time for blood donations to be tax deductible (2024)

I wouldn't know Australia's Tax Commissioner Rob Heferen if I fell over him, but I'll guess he is very busy overseeing the collection of around $750 billion of tax revenue this year.

I'll take another guess his overly full weekly diary prevents him from being one of the country's regular blood donors.

A few days ago, the Red Cross Blood Service, or LifeBlood as it is now branded, put out the call for more donations. Since I first started donating more than 40 years ago the donation business has changed a lot. Once it was only blood, whereas today it includes plasma, platelets, microbiota and breast milk.

Centres have been expanded, uniforms modernised and equipment upgraded, but the Red Cross has needed to find efficiencies. A personal regret was the loss of the refreshment attendant who'd make the most fantastic milkshakes.

The public calls for donations are becoming more frequent and perhaps it's not surprising.

In the countless hours sitting and lying in the comfortable collection centre chairs chatting to the wonderful staff amid a jungle of whirring and beeping machines and tubes I've had the chance to think about the donation business. And it's struck me the model of relying on volunteers that has served the nation so well for so long is becoming harder to sustain and might benefit from a little stimulus.

Improving medical technology means more patients can be treated than ever before, raising the demand for blood products. But the process of donating has, for good reason, grown more complicated.

Avoiding errors in the management of stored product is critical as is avoiding the risk of contamination through infected donors. Donors appreciate this but the fact is that the donor contributing a bag of plasma today must be prepared to devote more of their day than a blood donor in 1980. At the same time, they need to answer a long list of questions about their health and lifestyle, something many Australians would find uncomfortable. They have to hydrate well beforehand and limit their activity a little afterwards.

The smallish percentage of the population that does donate regularly, known as returning donors, still constitutes a large number of Australians - around 420,000 - and all take pride in understanding that lives are saved by their efforts. The underlying problem is, however, that as the population grows and medical procedures grow alongside it, the demand for blood products keeps moving ahead of the available donors. In a world that grows busier by the day finding more Australians with the time to donate is becomes harder. And, I'll suggest, will only grow harder.

So, what do we do to tackle this challenge? Paying for donations is occasionally cited as a remedy, but this should be avoided if for no other reason than it's a feature of the American health system and that is surely no model for Australia to follow. A better option would be to call on the aforementioned Mr Heferen to determine blood donations will in future, subject to an appropriate value being placed on them, become tax deductible.

Given we offer deductions for donations to all sorts of things, many of which don't save lives, the move would be more than justified and give a long overdue recognition to hundreds of thousands of Australians doing the right thing year after year.

Whether he is familiar with blood donating or not the question of deductibility won't take Rob long to sort out. The ATO has long had in place a test for determining what can be claimed as a deduction.

First, the donation must be made to an entity that has DGR status. Second, it must truly be a gift or donation and not be subject to any instruction as to who personally benefits from it. And it must be in the form of money or property, or be capable of having a value put on it.

There are other compelling arguments in support of deductibility. In the hundreds of hours I've spent in collection centres I've observed a donor population comprising a fair number of younger Australians and an equally large number of older Australians.

Blue collar donors are as strongly represented as white collar, and I'll take another educated guess that the donor base is heavily representative of the lower to middle income earning population.

It's incongruous and more than a little inequitable that someone donating plasma 25 times a year, requiring a very significant time commitment and a tolerance of many personal questions, gets no recognition under our tax system.

Meanwhile, someone who does no more than write a cheque to an art gallery, claims a full deduction.

It's also a little odd this situation exists as Australia's CSL grows ever more significant in the global business world.

Although only a small part of the behemoth's $2.5 billion annual profit can be attributed to its paying Lifeblood a lower price for 842 tonnes of plasma than it would had the stock not been voluntarily donated, the fact remains volunteers now underpin a huge for-profit enterprise, something that was not the case years ago.

Offering tax deductibility for donations would provide an overdue recognition the world has changed because it would place a value on a critical part of a growing enterprise.

Busy as he is, Rob Heferen has a new challenge. If he hasn't rolled up his sleeve at a Lifeblood Centre before, I'd be happy to introduce him.