Write-Offs: Clintons’ and Gores’ Giving; Sleeping at the Office

* President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton gave a total of $270,725 to charity in 1997, according to their federal tax return. About $250,000 of that sum came from earnings from Mrs. Clinton’s book, It Takes a Village, and went to children’s hospitals and other groups. Vice-President Gore and Tipper Gore gave $353 to charity last year. That figure was far less than the $35,530 that the Gores contributed in 1996; most of their contributions that year came from the proceeds from Mrs. Gore’s book, Picture This: A Visual Diary.

* The executive director of a private foundation can spend the night at the fund’s offices without breaking the law, the I.R.S. says. In its ruling, which involved a foundation whose top employee lived out of state, the revenue service said it was fine for the executive to sleep on the office’s Murphy bed instead of paying for a hotel room. Foundations are generally prohibited from providing goods, services, or facilities to key officials that result in improper “private benefits” to them. But in this case, the I.R.S. decided, the accommodations were “reasonable and necessary to the performance of [the foundation’s] exempt purpose” (Letter Ruling 9805021).