Not really.  Taking a lower-paying job not only avoids taxes, it lowers your income (both pre-tax and after-tax).<p>With charitable giving you can avoid taxes but still retain exactly the same after-tax income (assuming that you were going to gift to charity regardless of whether you got deduction or not).  That is, you can gift $100 to charity, deduct the gift, and so avoid (say) $30 in tax. In this case the gift to charity effectively results in you having $100 less than before.  Or, for same net result to you (minus $100), you could gift (after-tax) dollars to charity, say $70, and pay the $30 in taxes that you avoided in previous scenario.  Only in second case you ended up giving only $70 to charity, because $30 goes to government.  In first case you gave all of the $100 outlay to charity, avoided the $30 tax.