December 13, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
While charities of all kinds are focused on efforts to extend and expand a tax break that encourages people to donate money from their individual retirement accounts, arts and environmental groups are paying attention to two other charitable-giving measures that were passed at the same time as the retirement benefit.
Environmental groups are pushing for an extension of a measure that expanded tax deductions for people who donate the development rights to historically or environmentally important properties. It is set to expire on December 31, just as the IRA measure is.
The House and Senate have both voted to allow landowners at least one more year to protect ranches, wetlands, forests, and other areas by creating conservation easements, as the donated development rights are called, to protect their properties. The two chambers have to resolve differences, but conservation groups are optimistic the measure will be extended soon.
Conservation groups say that would greatly help them, because it has been a struggle to arrange land-protection gifts in the limited amount of time allowed under the current law. According to the Land Trust Alliance, a national group representing 1,100 land trusts, it can take as long as five years to set up an easement. Land-trust groups are racing to complete the paperwork on pending property gifts as fast as possible.
Art Donations
Meanwhile, museums and other arts institutions are trying to persuade Congress to weaken some restrictions it passed along with the conservation and retirement provisions.
The institutions say they have lost donations because Congress sharply curtailed tax deductions available to people who make a long-term deal to donate artwork in the future rather than giving it away immediately.
“The change has had an unbelievably negative impact on our acquisition program, a profoundly negative impact,” said Neal Benezra, director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in an interview published on Time magazine’s Web site.
“The number of gifts from one year to the next has dropped off by something like 80 percent,” he said.
Rather than give away their artworks to museums, people are selling them to other collectors, says Gail Andrews, director of the Birmingham Museum of Art and president of the Association of Art Museum Directors.
“The biggest detriment that we see is just the potential loss of objects to the American public that can slip away to other private collections and not be as available,” she adds.
Rep. Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico, and Rep. Phil English, a Pennsylvania Republican, introduced a bill in October that would soften some of the restrictions that museum officials have complained about.
However, the legislation has received little support from other lawmakers, and Congress has not set a time to take any further action on it.
