[NHCOLL-L:1007] NYT: Scientist Sees Bugs As Tax Write - Off

[Sally Shelton]

>From the NY Times website
______________________

April 15, 2001 

Scientist Sees Bugs As Tax Write - Off

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
  
Filed at 2:25 p.m. ET

ATHENS, Ga. (AP) -- The room is chilly, and the smell of mothballs lingers among endless rows of bland, gray cabinets. But there is a sure sign of spring: Cecil Smith is down to his last boxes of dead bugs.

At his cramped office at the University of Georgia, Smith examines thousands of insects, pokes pins through their tiny bodies, matches them with labels smaller than a baby's fingernail and lines them up in columns and rows, like little armies.

And he must do it quickly: Tax time is here, and the critters mean cash.

Each year about a dozen people looking for a tax write-off donate insect collections to the Georgia Museum of Natural History, and it's Smith's job to give them a price tag. The value varies widely for creatures most people think of as a bother at best.

``If it comes in as just a dead bug, it's worth a nickel,'' Smith said. ``You're not going to get rich that way.''

How you get rich -- or at least get a fat refund from the government -- is all in the presentation, the care and cataloging. Got an exotic specimen? Add 55 cents to the value. Label it properly for an extra $1.15. Mount it on a slide and chalk up seven bucks.

``Some of the beetles, you have to pull out the genitals'' in order to properly classify them, Smith said. ``That adds another dollar or two.''

The donations -- sometimes more than 1,000 bugs at a time -- come mostly from Georgia and the rest of the South, with an occasional contribution from overseas. They are considered charitable contributions, subtracting directly from donors' taxable income.

Insects are just one of the unusual items taxpayers donate seeking write-offs, said Mark Green, an Atlanta-based Internal Revenue Service spokesman. Among the others: postage stamps, exotic birds, theater props and science experiments.

``You name it,'' he said. ``If you can think of it, they give it away.''

Smith is quick to pinpoint the average value of a donation: $4,995. The IRS requires detailed documentation of charitable contributions of more than $5,000 -- and independent appraisals for contributions of more than $20,000.

Similar insect gifts swamp other museums -- particularly the Smithsonian -- at the end of each calendar year.

``We have people who collect butterflies, all the way down to the fleas,'' Smith said, glancing over a display of angry-looking beetles. ``There's no accounting for some people's taste, I guess.''

Smith, 57, has been informally appraising bugs for two decades. The IRS decided several years ago there was a danger of insect inflation as museums competing for donations offered high prices for collections.

So Smith's valuations are strictly suggestions. Still, collectors seek his advice each year as they prepare income tax returns.

Roy Morris of Lakeland, Fla., has been an amateur insect collector for almost 20 years. He's been to Bolivia, Mexico and Panama to pursue his hobby -- all trips that tax savings helped him make.

``It helps us support our habit,'' he said. ``With a family and a job, the trips every year seem to get more and more expensive -- the travel, that type of stuff. So it's vital.''

Morris also uses his tax savings-funded trips to pick up insects for talks he gives to children. ``They like walking sticks, praying mantises, big moths, things like that,'' he said. ``I'm a beetle person, myself.''

The Georgia collection is up to about 1 million insects. Taking inventory of bugs no bigger than a breadcrumb is nearly impossible, but Smith figures about 15,000 new specimens come in each year. About half are from donors seeking tax write-offs. Rarely is a donation rejected.

But saving money isn't as easy as plucking June bugs off a backyard tree.

``You can't just go collect cockroaches out of someone's kitchen,'' Smith said. ``These guys know what they're doing. And you can't just put an arbitrary name on it. If they tried to snooker me, I don't think they'd get very far.''

Smith does some collecting on his own, exploring the northeast Georgia woods near the Athens campus. He grants that he's gained vast knowledge of the insects he prices and catalogs, but knows each new box in the mail might teach him more.

``You never run out of new things to experience. There's always something new around the bend,'' he said. ``A lot of kids play with bugs when they're young. I never grew up, I guess.''



Sally Y. Shelton
Collections Officer
National Museum of Natural History
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, DC   20560-0107
phone (202) 786-2601, FAX (202) 786-2328
email Shelton.Sally at nmnh.si.edu

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