Tax-form change may hurt charities

An effort to streamline the 2004 Utah income tax form may inadvertently cause Utah taxpayers to contribute less money to local charities. That's the worry of the Pamela Atkinson Homeless Trust Fund and seven other groups eligible for donations through income tax checkoffs.

In past years, tax forms listed the names of the eligible funds. This year, because the Utah Legislature voted to add three new funds to the list but didn't allocate any money to make the tax form longer, the Utah Tax Commission decided to leave all the names off the forms and refer taxpayers instead to codes listed in the accompanying income tax booklet.

Will taxpayers make the effort? Gregory Sheehan of the Division of Wildlife Services predicts most won't and that the result might be a two-thirds reduction in money donated to the division's nongame wildlife fund and wolf depredation fund.

At a press conference Wednesday, members of several charities and a representative from the Utah Tax Commission talked about the unintended consequences of the new tax forms.

"We're not heartless tax collectors, we're members of the community," insisted Jodi Monaco, public information officer of the commission. "We were trying to make the form simple. In a way, (the checkoff problem) is a casualty of an improvement."

Perhaps they could have made the type smaller and thus had room on the form to include the names of the charities, Monaco said. But then maybe the elderly wouldn't have been able to read them. "We're between a rock and a hard place," she said.

"We're hoping next year that opportunities will come up to change the tax form," she said.

Members of the affected funds were cordial but expressed their disappointment with the unintended confusion.

"We need to make it easier for people to give," said Pamela Atkinson, a long-time advocate for the homeless. "People say 'I never look at the (tax) booklet.' "

Atkinson also noted that as more funds have been added to the checkoff list, the amount donated to each individual fund has dropped.

Last year 26,721 Utahns donated a total of $330,080 to four charities: the nongame wildlife fund, the homeless trust fund, the statewide school district fund, and the Kurt Oscarson Children's Organ Transplant Fund. This year three new funds were added: the wolf depredation fund (which will pay for damages caused by the migration of wolves into the state), the unified school fund and funding for applied technology centers.

The groups say they will ramp up their efforts to encourage Utahns to donate money through tax checkoffs.