Time to break out that good old jar of Vaseline, boys and girls.
I like many of you artists out there have over the years, donated artwork to worthy causes. You know what we got along with that warm fuzzy feeling of helping out a worthy cause? We got…screwed and have been getting screwed since 1969
It works like this:
A collector of your work pays lets say, $1,000 for a creation by you. In fact that is the average price for a creation by you and many collectors buy your work.
One day a collector, lets call her Jane, decides to donate a creation she had purchased from you a while ago to the SPCA. Inspired by her example YOU decide to donate a creation of equal worth to the SPCA.
Come tax time Jane can claim a $1,000 deduction with her SPCA receipt in hand and YOU can only claim $40 with your SPCA receipt in hand.
What the hell just happened here?
You just got screwed by the 1969 tax provision which disallows fair market value deductions for artists. That’s right, creators donating their own work can only deduct their costs, while everyone else is allowed to deduct the full market value. In other words YOU have just been propelled onto the pavement by a punt up the posterior!
How did this happen?
Richard Milhous Nixon, the president who brought us Watergate, G. Gorden Liddy and magical self erasing audio tape.
When Nixon donated his vice presidential papers and documents in 1969, he took a gigantic tax deduction. Outraged, congress enacted the aforementioned tax provision to curb this kind of abuse from occurring in the future, but in fact laid down the paving stones on the road paved with good intentions.
The provision was aimed at politicians to prevent them from profiting from their public service, but it missed and hit us right between the eyes…ouch!
Why didn’t congress change the rules to target public servants only? The IRS had already created, in 1968, the Arts Advisory panel to audit the accuracy of privately obtained appraisals. Fears that artists would “paint a deduction at tax time” had already been addressed a year earlier than the 1969 denial of fair-market value for creators.
So why are YOU and I still being denied rights equal to everyone else when it comes to our creations in 2013?
I don’t know, I just hope it’s not because we got use to taking it in the ass—with the help of lots of Vaseline of course.
-from the easel of
Julian Greigh
Anonymous
One would think that the IRS would atleast be kind enough to buy me a martini, but I guess when you are guaranteed getting ‘lucky’, you become an inconsiderate prick bastard. Thanks Uncle Sam! By the way, does the fact that I have a standing date with the IRS every April so that I can be brutally bent over the nearest desk make me a closet sadist?