[et-al]

Smart move. That's not too shabby of a tax deduction.

[paulcole]

I don't understand how the deduction from giving X to a researcher and X to a charity is smarter than just giving X to the researcher?

[NhanH]

Tax deduction for the researcher, not Apple (note the original GP was about "altruistic / independently wealthy researchers").

[mkagenius]

Hows donation of X for tax savings is better than 0.6X income?

[0xmohit]

It is meant to encourage donations to non-profits which is something pretty good that corporates could do.

So it effectively reduces to what you'd prefer: 0.6X for yourself, or 2X for a non-profit that you want to support.