
Writing Off the Warhol Next Door - achariam
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/business/art-collectors-gain-tax-benefits-from-private-museums.html?_r=1
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fiatmoney
Here's a neat trick:

\- Buy Painting X1, X2, X3, ... for 10K apiece.

\- Your friend buys Painting Y1, Y2, Y3, ... for 10K apiece.

\- You buy one of your friend's paintings for 1M. He does the same.

\- Holy cow! "Market price" for the rest of your paintings is now 100x greater
than it was yesterday.

\- "Donate" as many of the paintings as you wish to the museum next door.
Deduct the full value (now 1M) on your taxes.

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iolothebard
You should see the Romney Family's IRAs. 30k/year somehow has magically grown
to 87 million. Nice eh?

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fiatmoney
Yeah, it's amazing what you can do when you're able to arbitrarily declare the
"market value" of the stock you're putting in your IRA.

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charlesdm
Doesn't he have a permanent profit share in the Bain funds? Bain is one of the
more successful private equity funds in the world, and as such, I'd think that
'stake' could easily be valued at 10-20x earnings.

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spinlock
I think those are exactly the deals he had access to in his IRA.

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discardorama
Simple fix? Restrict the tax writeoff to $100/visitor/year.

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rdtsc
To write off $1M you'd need 10000 visitors/year. Contract a startup that
gathers & shuttles fake visitors in at 1000/day for 10 days a year.

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zorpner
Do a Fermi estimate on the cost of that service.

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hristov
Somebody should start a website that catalogs all of these museums. Then we
the unwashed masses should all visit them. Then we will all find out whether
these are actual museums or just tax avoidance schemes.

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borkt
[http://www.pier24.org](http://www.pier24.org)

Great Photography collection in SF that meets this criteria it seems.
Definitely worth a visit.

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bootload
_"... Wealthy collectors, of course, have long saved millions of dollars in
federal taxes by donating art and money to museums and foundations. But what
distinguishes Mr. Brant’s center and a growing number of private tax-exempt
exhibition spaces like it is that their founders can deduct the full market
value of any art, cash and stocks they donate, even when the museums are just
a quick stroll from their living rooms. ..."_

Sounds suspiciously like money laundering. You don't think all that expensive
Art, is really worth that amount do you?

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im2w1l
In what way are paintings educational? Don't get me wrong I like looking at
them, but I can't say I have learned any transferable skills, or that they've
made me a better person or anything like that.

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matt4077
Education isn't just about "transferrable skills", at least not in the sense
that you can attach a $ value for it. Society is advanced by two broad
categories: science & technology, and arts & culture. To deny the benefit
society reaps from a culturally educated population is insane.

