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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (467293)	1/25/2012 6:27:04 PM
From: SteveinTX	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793549

" Buy a picture, get it appraised for a bundle and give it to a museum. It's one of the biggest tax rackets going." Agree with the gist of your message but this specific strategy isn't so easy to pull off anymore. The IRS catches on to most things after a while and inflated appraisals are pretty easy to detect. Now, if you really know art and can procure pieces that genuinely increase in value over time, that is another matter.

To: LindyBill who wrote (467293)	1/25/2012 8:37:42 PM
From: Elroy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 793549

Elroy, you been out of the country and not paying taxes here all of your life? Out of the country for the past 11 years, but still paying taxes. However, I've never itemized deductions (that I can recall). My charitable contributions tend to be $100 or so to some friend running a marathon for cancer research, stuff like that. Never made it over the individual deduction amount. You set up an non-profit NGO and you can take in gifts as charity all you want. I think you can also pay yourself a hefty half million dollar a year salary with all of the non-profits :-) It does seem strange that giving money to your church, much of which must go for church staff's salary, building maintenance, utilities, etc. and not necessarily to feeding the poor, is deductible. It seems to me that choosing to help pay for your clergy's salary should not reduce one's obligation to pay his share of the federal government's salaries.