E-mail to Guild Members, Aug. 28, 2003:

Congress returns to Washington after Labor Day, and we ask once more for your help to support H.R. 806, the Artists' Contribution to American Heritage Act, which would allow creators who donate their creations to non-profit institutions to take a charitable deduction equal to the fair market value of the work.

We expect the House Ways and Means Committee to discuss H.R. 806 in the first week of September. We continue to hope that Ways and Means will decide to include H.R. 806 in H.R. 7, the Charitable Giving Act.

Convincing Rep. Bill Thomas (R. Cal), chair of the committee, to endorse the bill is essential to this effort. If Ways and Means includes H.R. 806 in H.R. 7, then it will almost certainly become law, because the Senate passed its version of H.R. 806 in April as part of the Charity Aid, Recovery and Empowerment Act of 2003 (the CARE Act).

If Way and Means fails to make H.R. 806 part of H.R. 7, our job will be much more difficult – we'll have to convince House and Senate negotiators to agree to include the Act in the final version of the C.A.R.E.-Charitable Giving Act that is sent for the President to sign.

As we near what we hope is the finish line in this four-year endeavor, we call on you again for help. Many Guild members have written, phoned or otherwise contacted their representatives to support the Act, but whether or not you have done so, please take action now.

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ACTION REQUESTED: PHONE YOUR REPRESENTATIVE, EVEN IF HE OR SHE IS ALREADY A CO-SPONSOR

1. Call your representative (see below for phone numbers) and ask him or her to call the office of Rep. Bill Thomas, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, and request that he include H.R. 806, the Artists' Contribution to American Heritage Act, in H.R. 7, the Charitable Giving Act of 2003.

2. If your representative is not a cosponsor of the bill, call his or her office today and ask him or her to cosponsor H.R. 806. A list of the Act's cosponsors is available at
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:HR00806:@@@P.

3. Call one non-profit institution in your community that would benefit from passage of the Act – such as a library, archive, museum or art center – and ask that it, too, take the above actions.

4. If you know anyone who makes contributions to either political party, ask them to call their representatives with the same message.

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CONTACT INFORMATION AND TIMING

The Ways and Means Committee could take up the fate of H.R. 806 as early as September 2. Please make your contact as soon as possible.

To locate your representative, visit: http://www.house.gov, or http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/, or call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected.

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PLEASE INFORM US

If you contact your representative or an institution, please let us know. Simply e-mail us at staff@authorsguild.org.

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BACKGROUND

H.R. 806, the Artists' Contribution to American Heritage Act, would change the tax code to allow authors and artists to deduct for tax purposes the appraised market value of their own work (such as manuscripts, first editions, or fine artwork) that they donate to museums, universities and libraries. Current tax laws permit the creators to deduct only the value of the materials used in creating the original manuscript. Collectors and others, however, are permitted to deduct the fair market value of donated manuscripts.

With passage of the Senate's version of that legislation, known as the Artist-Museum Partnership Act, as part of its CARE Act in April, we have never come closer to righting this inequity. Our best hope for success was in having the House Ways and Means Committee vote to attach H.R. 806 to the Charitable Giving Act of 2003 (similar to the Senate's CARE Act). Unfortunately, the Ways and Means Committee has not yet decided to include H.R. 806 in the Charitable Giving Act. If it does not, then when House and Senate conferences meet to reconcile the CARE Act with the Charitable Giving Act, they will need to decide whether to include our legislation. The more co-sponsors H.R. 806 has in the House, the more likely it is to be included in the reconciled legislation. As it is, H.R. 806 has 76 co-sponsors – not enough to bolster its inclusion.