I know, I know...

Well, I know you all hate advocacy but listen up people, this is important. Most of you are non profit arts organizations, supported by our federal government in two ways, through paying no or minimal taxes and through charitable giving tax deductions whereby private citizens reduce their tax burden by making donations to non profit organizations recognized by the government as such. I know you all know all of this but I point it out to point out that grants are not the only thing that comes from the government and they are thinking about taking away the charitable giving tax deduction.

Earlier this year as a part of the fiscal cliff deal – households with high incomes ($300,000 for a couple, $250,000 for an individual) were already hit with a reduction in the amount of deductions that they can take. It’s a little complicated, the best explanation I found was here. So already, we don’t even know how this will affect us at the end of the year. There are various proposals under consideration to further reduce the deductions that taxpayers can take for charitable giving. So, write or call your congresspeople and let them know that you are having none of that. There is an easy way to do that here.

Deb