[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 14, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2174-S2175]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
By Mr. LEAHY (for himself, Mr. Casey, Mr. McCain, Mr. Blunt, Ms.
Stabenow, and Mr. Cochran):
S. 930. A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to
permanently extend and expand the charitable deduction for
contributions of food inventory; to the Committee on Finance.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, millions of Americans are racing against
the clock to meet tomorrow's midnight deadline to file their taxes. In
the closing hours of the 113th Congress, we came together to approve
legislation to extend for 1 year, just 1 year, several tax credits that
are essential to small businesses and middleclass families. A 1 year
extension of these tax credits was surely welcomed by many, but such a
short extension leaves in place the uncertainty needed by so many
families and small businesses as they look ahead to the coming year to
plan large purchases, expansions, new home purchases, or even a family
vacation. I hope that Congress will tackle meaningful tax reform
legislation this year, so that we can protect hardworking families,
hold corporations accountable, incentivize environmental protections,
and encourage charitable giving.
So today, ahead of Tax Day, I am introducing three commonsense
proposals, S. 930, S. 931, and S. 932, that will provide reasonable tax
credits for such things as surplus food donations, art donations, and
preservation of our historic buildings in communities and villages
across the country.
The bipartisan Good Samaritan Hunger Relief Tax Incentive Extension
Act expands upon a proven and effective tax incentive to encourage
businesses and farms to donate surplus food to their local food banks.
A 2011 study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that demand on
food banks across the country has risen dramatically during and since
the recent economic recession, with more than 50 million Americans
living in food insecure households. Despite this, as much as 40 percent
of the food that is produced, grown and transported in the United
States goes unused as some businesses find it too costly to donate the
excess food, amounting to 70 billion pounds of wasted food each year.
The Good Samaritan Hunger Relief Tax Incentive Act addresses this by
permanently extending the same tax incentives to donate food now
available to corporations to all businesses, including small
businesses, farmers, ranchers and restaurant owners--many of whom often
have large amounts of fresh food to donate. Since the most recent
extension of this tax incentive through 2013, the restaurant industry
alone experienced a 137 percent increase in the pounds of food donated.
This bill--cosponsored by Senators Cochran, Stabenow, McCain, Casey,
and Blunt, is supported by many organizations including Feeding
America, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Food Marketing
Institute, Grocery Manufacturers Association, the National Restaurant
Association, Hunger Free Vermont, and the Vermont Food Bank.
The Artist-Museum Partnership Act was first introduced in 2000. This
legislation would preserve cherished art works for the public by
allowing artists to take a fair market deduction for works they donate
to museums, libraries, colleges and other public institutions. Under
current law, artists that donate their created work may only deduct the
cost of supplies, while a collector of the same work that donates it
[[Page S2175]]
to qualified charitable institutions is allowed to take a tax deduction
equal to the fair market value of the donated work.
Prior to 1969, artists and collectors alike were able to take a
deduction equivalent to the fair market value of a work. Congress
changed the law for artists more than 30 years ago in response to the
perception that some taxpayers were taking advantage of the law by
inflating the market value of self-created works. Since the law was
changed with respect to artists, fewer and fewer of them have donated
their works to museums and cultural institutions, while the government
has cut down significantly on the abuse of fair market value
determinations. The Artist-Museum Partnership Act would restore the law
to pre-1969 and allow artists who donate their own paintings,
manuscripts, compositions, or scholarly compositions to be subject to
the same new rules that all taxpayers or collectors who donate such
works follow.
The Artist-Museum Partnership Act is supported by such organizations
as the Association of Art Museum Directors, American Alliance of
Museums, Americans for the Arts, League of American Orchestras, OPERA
America, Dance/USA, National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, the
Vermont Arts Counsel, and the Shelburne Museum.
Finally, the Historic Downtown and Preservation and Access Act would
create a refundable tax credit for the installation of fire sprinklers
and elevators in older, multi-use buildings in historic downtowns. Each
year fire destroys hundreds of vulnerable historic buildings that serve
as the anchors of America's vibrant villages and downtowns, in many
cases resulting in injury or loss of life. The Historic Downtown and
Preservation and Access Act creates a 50 percent refundable tax credit
capped at $50,000 to encourage the installation of upfront but costly
sprinkler systems in order to help prevent the loss of life, reduce
property damage, and decrease Federal expenditures on rebuilding
efforts after these fires.
This bill also incentivizes the installation of elevators in order to
encourage the use of upper story office, retail, and housing space in
historic downtown buildings that would otherwise go unused due to
inaccessibility. The new refundable tax credit, modeled after the State
of Vermont's highly successful downtown historic tax credit, would
allow private entities with little tax liability and nonprofits alike
to install these important property and life-saving devices in historic
buildings.
Congress must have a meaningful debate about how we can best reform,
simplify, and streamline our complicated tax system. These are just a
few of the proposals I hope Congress will consider in this debate. It
is time we start working to incentivize programs that stand to best
help our communities, rather than protect the wealthiest among us from
paying their fair share.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I am proud to be an original cosponsor of
the Good Samaritan Hunger Relief Act of 2015, which was introduced
today by Senator Patrick Leahy and cosponsored by Senators Bob Casey,
Thad Cochran, Debbie Stabenow, and Roy Blunt.
This bipartisan bill would benefit food banks and hunger charities
around the nation. At its core, the bill would provide tax incentives
for small and medium business who donate food or resources to food
banks. This means restaurants, farms, and other food providers can do
even more in their local communities to help fight hunger.
Speaking for my state, I can tell you that hunger is a very real
problem in Arizona. Currently about one in five Arizonans live below
the poverty line. In some parts of the State, one-in-four children and
one-in-seven seniors live in poverty--particularly on Indian
reservations where unemployment rates approach 75 percent, and in
minority communities. Often these individuals are left to wonder where
their next meal will come from.
I am proud that Phoenix, Arizona is home to the world's first food
bank, the St. Mary's Food Bank. Since its founding in 1967, St. Mary's
has grown into a leading hunger organization and has distributed more
than 700 million pounds of food to people all over Arizona.
I believe this bill's projected cost to the Treasury can be offset by
reducing unnecessary and wasteful agriculture subsidies. I would
encourage my colleagues to look at the most recent Farm Bill that was
signed into law in 2013 and is projected to cost over $996 billion over
the next 10 years. It is fraught with special interest farm subsidies
that we could instead reduce or terminate and use the savings to pay
for the important tax incentive programs provided by this bill.
For example, the Farm Bill includes crop insurance subsidies for
tobacco products, which are estimated to cost taxpayers $33 million
each year. It also provides for the USDA Market Access Program, which
has long been criticized by taxpayer watchdogs as a form of corporate
welfare because it spends roughly $200 million annually to subsidize
advertising, market research and trade shows for large corporations
overseas. The Farm Bill also includes an obscure set of USDA grants
that subsidizes scientific research for large agriculture operations,
such as $25 million earmarked for the study of the health benefits of
lima beans and peas, and $1.3 million set-aside for genome sequencing
of Christmas trees. Further, it calls for the creation of a USDA
Catfish Office, which I have long criticized along with the Government
Accountability Office and the Obama administration for being wasteful
and duplicative of FDA's catfish inspection program and will ultimately
cost the American taxpayer $14 million a year. These are just a few of
the many wasteful Farm Bill programs that could be eliminated to offset
the estimated costs of our proposed tax incentive legislation.
I encourage my colleagues to support this legislation and consider
these and other Farm Bill spending offsets as the bill moves through
the legislative process.
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