Re: Re: Copyright Assignment

At 4:10 PM -0400 7/8/04, Vance R. Koven wrote:
>At 09:58 AM 7/8/2004, john noble wrote:
>>To address valuation concerns, the Administration's FY2005 Budget
>>includes a proposal to limit the taxpayer's initial deduction for
>>contributions of certain intellectual property to the lesser of the
>>taxpayer's basis in the property or the fair market value of the
>>property.
>
>The *lesser*? That's pretty Draconian: What is any writer's basis in
>the copyright of a book? Would Margaret Mitchell get a deduction of
>zero if she contributed her IP in Gone With the Wind? Talk about
>something not being worth the paper it's printed on (or only just)!

As I understand it, under current law, the presumptive value is the basis, i.e. cost of production. It can be rebutted by an expert appraisal of fair market value, but for all practical purposes, you can't get an appraisal above basis without evidence of an actual market transaction. The new rules would REQUIRE a market transaction to rebut the presumption. So Margaret Mitchell, starting over, and donating the book to a charity, would get to deduct the cost of the paper initially, and would get to increase the deduction to the market value of the rights when the were actually resold by the donee. Received on Fri Jul 09 2004 - 19:06:30 GMT