What’s In A Name? Should Naming Rights Reduce Charitable Deductions?
The story raises the question of whether you should be able to take a full charitable deduction for a donation if, as a legally binding condition of the donation, you get to have a landmark building named after you. It is worth noting that the Fisher family actually ended up making a profit, although rather a modest one on the whole deal. I computed the pre-tax return to the family as being roughly 0.85%, which is really anemic, unless you compare it to what is being paid on contemporary deposit balances. If you assume that Mr. Fisher took a charitable deduction with a 70% benefit in 1973 and the family paid capital gain tax on the Lincoln Center payoff, the after tax return comes to 3.88%, which is not great, but still better than getting poked in the eye with a sharp stick.
Interview With Former Judge Central To Kansas Property Tax Consultant Controversy
These kinds of arrangements inevitably lead to “horse trading”—i.e., compromising the interests of some taxpayers to gain advantages for other taxpayers (or even the tax consultant himself). They also lead to the practice of flooding county assessor offices with masses of appeals and using sheer volume as leverage to extract nuisance settlements. An entrepreneur can make a tidy profit each year aggregating and leveraging the appeal rights of thousands of taxpayers and settling claims within the margins.
Conduct such as this has been widely reported by county officials. For example, during a formal legislative hearing in September 2013, one county official testified that it was indeed a “truism” that such conduct occurs regularly, in addition to frivolous filings, unauthorized representation, discovery misconduct, and even physical intimidation and verbal abuse.
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Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.