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Research on philanthropy has focused mainly on the link between state action and private action of public utility, seeing in philanthropic action sometimes a possible support to state action, sometimes a competition to the state. On the other hand, few studies have looked at the boundaries between the third sector and the market. However, this question seems all the more relevant today at a time of neoliberal reforms and the expansion of markets. In this article, we examine this border through a survey conducted in Switzerland, a corporatist country, with a liberal policy towards the non-profit sector. Returning first to the literature to show how competition with the State has structured debates on the differentiated developments of philanthropy in different countries, we will see how, at least in the Swiss situation, the question of possible competition with the market is today central for the actors in charge of giving tax exemption, namely the employees of tax administrations. And perhaps by questioning too much the development of philanthropy from the sole point of view of state action, we have failed to see that a limit to the extension of this sector is not the will of a state to maintain a monopoly on various activities, but a liberal concern to always guarantee the market fair and equal conditions for all participants.