ABOVE: MSNBC says more and more museums are accepting “fractional gifts,” or pieces that owners lend them for part of the year, and receive part of a tax return.

The concept of time-sharing—once reserved for Boca Raton condos and the children of divorced parents—is a growing one among gallery donors, MSNBC reported earlier this week. For collectors who like the idea of charity but can’t quite stomach the reality of it right now, “Fractional Giving” is an intermediate step (warning—math ahead): Wealthy Donor X allows Public Gallery Y to display Masterpiece Z, worth value V for a period of time (t) more than zero and less than one (1) year, e.g. 0.25 (three months). X receives a tax return ($) equal to tV. Got it? $ = tV. Or, as MSNBC more succinctly put it, if you donate a $1 million piece of art for 3 months of the year, you’ll get a $250,000 tax receipt. Another three months a few years down the road, another tax receipt, at the art’s new appraised value. Apparently more and more museums are finding their donors asking for this option, and what Wealthy Donor X wants, Wealthy Donor X gets.

Near the end of the article, the true motive of the whole scheme becomes clear, although the author doesn’t really connect the dots: donors get to space out their giving of a single piece over multiple tax years, and the piece is more than likely to appreciate in value over time. That means that the final chunk of display time (before the museum gets the piece forever), will bring in the biggest tax receipt. A pretty sweet system: the donors get to keep the art for longer and they get cumulatively bigger tax writeoffs over several years, instead of one lump sum (V increases, so $ does too). Who says accounting isn’t a creative art?

LINK: MSNBC > SFMOMA turns ‘timeshare’ gifts into an art form