Your Tax Dollars at Work? Hunters Net Hefty Deductions for Trophy Animals

Ardent hunter Dave Liniger has shot leopards, lions, elephants, and scores of other wild animals all over the world. Stuffed and mounted, the animal "trophies" were eventually donated to a museum—the museum that real estate magnate Liniger himself had created in Colorado—and claimed as personal income tax write-offs.

Really big tax write-offs.

But the Internal Revenue Service didn't see it that way. IRS experts valued Liniger's collection at $370,665, less than a third of the $1.4 million that the Re/Max International chairman had claimed for 1999. Liniger and his wife, Gail, had to pay an additional $660,215 in taxes for 1999, according to a Denver Post March 13, 2005 account.

Liniger isn't the only trophy hunter to exploit the tax code to finance his thirst for killing wild animals. HSUS investigators estimate that hundreds of hunters annually write off hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes. It's reached a point where Congress needs to crack down on this unjustifiable tax loophole.

"Should your tax dollars be used to finance trophy hunting like this? We don't think so," says Michael Markarian, executive vice president of The HSUS.

And how does one put a proper price tag on the value of a mounted bighorn sheep or zebra anyway?

The Linigers, who sued the IRS on March 1 in federal court in Denver, say it's "replacement value," or what it would cost to go back to those around-the-world locations to hunt, stuff, and ship replacements.

IRS regulations say it depends on "fair market value" (FMV) or what the trophy animals would bring on the open market.

Liniger, a wealthy businessman who briefly toyed with running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, did have a large and impressive collection. But HSUS investigators say it's not uncommon for not-quite-so-rich hunters to use the same tax-avoidance technique, even when their trophy animals are not nearly so exotic or numerous as Liniger's.

"Inflated appraisals are a big problem," says Markarian. "There's no reasonable explanation of how having the mounted heads of animals on display serves the public good. Just as Congress and the IRS have gone after inflated write-offs for donating used cars, they should go after these kinds of abuses of the tax code."

Appraisals, Donations Mark the Trail

When hunters are looking to get write-offs for their game mounts, the name of a well-known organization, the Chicago Appraisers Association, often pops up. Indeed, CAA touts its ability to easily transfer mounts to museums. "Providing a Liaison Between Museums and Hunters Since 1966" proclaims one CAA marketing piece.

On its web site, CAA strives to imbue its customers with confidence in its services. "Mount donations are simple and perfectly legal; they only sound a bit intimidating because of IRS requirements. The IRS allows you to contribute up to 30 percent of your adjusted gross income to a charity or museum. This can be in cash or contributed items. Game mounts, like art and antiques, fall into this category."

CAA says such strategies are "the ideal solution for duplicate animals, unmounted skins, and when you decide to downsize your collection." They empathize with hunters' personal situations. "Over 39 years ago we noticed when a hunter needed to move to a smaller home, there was no place for his animals to go but to some decorator who sold them to a bar," company materials recount. "We had been active in the museum community with our art/antique appraisal work, so we began to provide a liaison between hunters and museums for placement of these valuable zoological specimens."

An HSUS investigator gives a blunt assessment: "We had been hearing consistent rumors of high-rollers who were writing off their hunting activity. We believe there is a significant over-appraisal, and we decided to look into it."

Elephant-Sized Deductions

In late 2004, the HSUS investigator, posing as a hunter, traveled to Highland Park, Illinois to discuss with R. Bruce Duncan, CAA founder, how to appraise and donate two mounts. The investigator produced amateur snapshots of the two mounts he wished to donate as a tax write-off. One was a wildebeest, "a rather ordinary specimen," according to the investigator, but the other, an oryx mounted on a pedestal, was a much more distinctive specimen, with exceptionally long horns.

Duncan asked a few questions about when the animals had been shot and who stuffed them. The whole exchange lasted a mere five minutes.

CAA says its appraisal uses 28 variables (taxidermist reputation, specimen condition, rarity, and provenance) for specimen evaluation. "Don't hunt for an elephant-sized deduction armed with a .22 caliber appraiser," CAA warns.

Yet many wildlife experts would question how specimen condition could be accurately assessed from photos. And when the investigator couldn't provide the name of the taxidermist, Duncan simply filled in a well-known substitute, remarking that the company "has a good reputation."

Four days later, Duncan provided the appraisal: $8,000 for the wildebeest and $8,500 for the oryx. Duncan also identified the museum location to receive the game mounts: the Wyobraska Natural History Museum in Gering, Nebraska.

In 2005, HSUS investigators, posing as representatives of a hunting lodge in need of decoration for its walls, braved Nebraska's February chill to meet with Mike Boone, curator for the Wyobraska museum. Boone routinely gets shipments of donated mounts by truck, and year's end (just before tax-deduction deadline time) brings the heaviest loads. Behind the museum, two green railroad cars and a yellow semi-tractor trailer have been adapted for storage. Boone estimates they hold close to 3,000 game mounts, skins, and other animal parts, the vast majority not museum-worthy.

Some of the mounts are "in really, really bad shape when they ship them off, but they still get a tax write-off, so I still take them." Pointing to one unfortunate creature, Boone says, "Something like him, he should have just been thrown in the dumpster ... but [the owner] gets a $5,000 tax write-off, so what the hell. He don't care." Other mounts duplicate what the museum already has, or just aren't as good specimens as what is already on display.

Boone acknowledges that the majority of the mounts are never going to be put on display in his museum. He holds on to them for the two years required by law, then tries to sell them through a Missouri auction house; others may be sold onsite or from the web site. Most, says Boone, would fetch just a small fraction of their appraised value.

Do-It-Yourself Tax Write-Offs

Who makes the arrangements to get mounts to museums? In the case of Wyobraska, about 99 percent of the game mounts come through the CAA, Boone says.

If you don't have a museum in mind or one at hand, CCA can help create one. "Dare to dream of your own natural history museum! We can help make it happen," CCA promotion materials say. "We can help you to obtain your 501-C-3 IRS ruling on your tax-deductible status, and we can advise you on the rest. It's that easy. We can advise on minimum investment requirements, perpetual funding, and intricacies of IRS regulations and academic affiliations."

Despite CAA's sunny-sounding web site promises, its founder Duncan has a cloudy past. In 1991 Duncan was sentenced to 10 months in prison for participating in a scheme in which big-game hunters received assistance from the now-defunct North Carolina Museum of Natural History to import the skins of endangered species.

In investigating the endangered species case, federal wildlife agents also discovered the remains of thousands of stuffed animals in a storage room—and found they also had a tax case based on inflated appraisals. "They had whitetail deer that had been appraised at $5,000 to $6,000, for heaven's sake. And you can't drive around North Carolina without hitting one of them," Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard H. Moore of Raleigh told the Los Angeles Times in 1991.

In this year's annual list of Dirty Dozen tax schemes, the Internal Revenue Service lists "abuse of charitable organizations and deductions." In the past few months, the IRS has zeroed in on the likes of "contributions" of a historic facade easement to a tax-exempt conservation organization, and individuals who took a tax write-off for contributions of used automobiles.

Is it time for wildlife trophy hunting at taxpayer expense to join the list?

What You Can Do

Please make a brief, polite phone call to your U.S. representative, your two U.S. senators, and the leaders of the Senate Finance Committee and House Committee on Ways and Means, and urge them to stop trophy hunters from bilking American taxpayers. Tell them that untold millions of dollars have been denied to the U.S. Treasury just so trophy hunters can finance their vacation. You can also send your legislators an email using our online advocacy form.

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