In Tuesday’s (10/1) Los Angeles Times, Mike Boehm reports, “California taxpayers who want to donate to arts education in the public schools will again be able to do so by checking off a box on income tax forms starting with the returns they’ll be filing next year to pay state taxes on their 2013 earnings. Gov. Jerry Brown signed the tax checkoff back into law Monday, after a similar program had lapsed.… The program is administered by the California Arts Council, which learned an object lesson in 2011 and 2012, when checkoffs brought in $164,298 and $165,647, respectively, for the 2010 and 2011 tax years. Back then, the label on the box was ‘Arts Council Fund,’ which presumed that taxpayers favorably disposed toward the arts would know what that meant. The new label, ‘Keep Arts in Schools Fund,’ more or less speaks for itself. The minimum contribution is $1, which donors can add to a tax payment, or subtract from a tax refund. Another difference in the new law is that the money can be used only for education programs in preschool through 12th grade, instead of the full gamut of grants overseen by the California Arts Council.”
Posted October 2, 2013
