If I read the primary linked article correctly, it's not the "has never been sold" situation that's the problem; appraisers assign estimated market values to all manner of artifacts all the time.
Rather, it's that the IRS is looking at the tax-deduction issue differently for creators than it does for collectors. For the creator (if I read Ms. Thomas right), once you've taken a business tax deduction on the materials you used to create a given work, you evidently can't turn around and claim a different tax deduction by donating the result of that work to a charitable or academic institution.
I can sort of see the logic in this formulation from a tax-law standpoint, but (as I've said downstream), I think it's a formulation that's patently unfair to creators.
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mmmag
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Date: 2014-07-25 07:04 pm (UTC)Rather, it's that the IRS is looking at the tax-deduction issue differently for creators than it does for collectors. For the creator (if I read Ms. Thomas right), once you've taken a business tax deduction on the materials you used to create a given work, you evidently can't turn around and claim a different tax deduction by donating the result of that work to a charitable or academic institution.
I can sort of see the logic in this formulation from a tax-law standpoint, but (as I've said downstream), I think it's a formulation that's patently unfair to creators.