From the Globe and Mail comes news that Andy Donato, the editorial cartoonist for the Sun newspaper chain, has won a major legal battle against the Canadian Revenue Agency over charitable tax credits he claimed on his taxes after donating 710 cartoon originals to Touro College in New York and Ontario’s Brock University in 1999 and 2001.
In 2002, the CRA alleged that Andy owed capital gains taxes on the gifts and wanted upwards of $100,000 in payment. The legal battle over the credits has waged for seven years. Last week the Tax Court of Canada dismissed the bulk of the CRA’s case.
“It was almost like a persecution,” Mr. Donato said yesterday from his home in Toronto. “What bothered me was I was the only cartoonist in the country that they went after. [Several other] cartoonists have been donating to universities for years, and getting tax receipts, and they haven’t been touched. I was the only one they went after and that pissed me off. … They just kept up. They wouldn’t let up.”
That’s why I never give to charities. That and I’m poor, and nobody wants my cartoons.
A hearty thanks to Mr. Donato for standing up for everybody else. It might have been disastrous to artists of any stripe had precedent been set in the government’s favor.