Pension bill add-on would gun down safari tax write-off

WASHINGTON — A provision in the pension-overhaul legislation approved Thursday night by the Senate and sent to the president will make it much more difficult for big-game hunters to donate their trophy mounts and claim substantial charitable-tax deductions.

Under a tax loophole, hunters have been allowed to deduct some or all of the cost of their safaris from their taxes if they later donated to a museum the animals that they killed and had mounted. Some museums in turn sold the specimens for far less than the amount the taxpayer deducted. The practice was well-advertised in the hunting community.

Under the new law, hunters will be able to deduct only the lesser of two costs: the market value of the trophy or the cost of taxidermy, that is preparing, stuffing and mounting the animal's skin. The provision is expected to increase government revenues by up to $49 million over 10 years.

Closing that loophole has been a priority of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who added a number of charitable-giving rules to the pension bill. He famously used a stuffed springbok to illustrate the loophole in an April 2005 committee hearing on charitable giving.

"The phoniness of this kind of donation called out for congressional action. It's ridiculous that a museum gets pennies for a dusty boar's head sitting in a railway car, while a donor gets big tax breaks for his African safari," Grassley said. "We're taking the tax cheating out of taxidermy."

The Humane Society of the United States, an animal-rights group, brought the matter to Grassley's attention after a two-year investigation. In one case, the group said, it found 800 donated trophy mounts stored in an old railroad car.

"This safari swindle involved a big-game hunter shooting an exotic animal in Asia, in Africa, or at a drive-through canned hunt in the United States — and writing off his hunting trip at the expense of the IRS and American taxpayers," said Michael Markarian, executive vice president of the Humane Society. "The trophy hunting boondoggle ... encouraged more killing of wildlife, including rare species."