If you donate to a charity and the charity gives you something in return — say, a Kansas University men’s basketball season ticket — Lawrence Bodle says your donation shouldn’t be tax-deductible.

“Why should it be?” he asked. “When you get something of value in return it’s not a contribution.”

Bodle said the KU Athletic Department was asking for trouble if it followed through on plans to tie next year’s season tickets to contributions to its Williams Fund.

“It seems pretty clear that a value is being put on those tickets,” said Bodle, 71.

According to the Internal Revenue Service, Bodle’s interpretation of the federal tax code was correct until Congress passed the Technical and Miscellaneous Revenue Act of 1988. Since then, 80 percent of a donation tied to tickets to an athletic event has been — and still is — tax-deductible.

“This used to come up all the time and, as you can imagine, proved to be quite controversial,” said David Stell, IRS spokesman for Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma. “So after some court rulings, Congress got around to writing a code provision about it.”

The deduction applies only to contributions to “educational institutions,” Stell said. It does not include the price of the ticket.

At KU, a 2003 men’s basketball season ticket sold for $481 for general admission, $513 for reserved seats, and $561 for priority seats.

Point system

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Last month, KU athletic director Lew Perkins said he and his staff were putting together a priority point system for deciding which ticket holders would get the best seats next season.

Under the new system, some prime seats — it’s not clear how many — are expected to require a minimum $5,000 contribution to the athletic department’s Williams Fund.

The donors will be able to deduct 80 percent of their $5,000 contribution.

“This is really a very pro-taxpayer ruling,” said Allan Ford, a KU accounting professor who studies tax policy.

Ford explained that Bodle was correct in making a distinction between a free-will contribution and a contribution that buys access to a ticket. The tricky part, he said, is figuring out how much that access is worth.

“Here’s the analogy,” he said. “If I sell you a ticket to a charitable event for $100, but the event is only worth $40 — your contribution is $60. We subtract out the value of the ticket.”

But in the season-ticket scenario, Ford said, the $5,000 doesn’t buy a ticket; it buys access to a ticket.

“So what’s that access worth?” Ford said. “Congress says it’s worth 20 percent of what you paid. So we subtract out the 20 percent and you get to deduct the remaining 80 percent.”

Perkins is expected to present the priority point system this spring.

“At this point, it’s not been formulated, so it’s far too premature to take questions on it,” said Jim Marchiony, an associate director of athletics at KU.

But Marchiony said it was safe to assume that those who contributed the most — and who have contributed the most in the past — would get the best seats.

“Gone for good”

The days of longtime ticket holders sitting in same prime seats year after year while contributing little or nothing to the Williams Fund “are gone for good,” Marchiony said.

Marchiony said the department had hired a consultant who helped craft the point system at the University of Connecticut, where Perkins was athletic director before coming to KU.

Bodle, a season-ticket holder for “40-plus years,” gave up his tickets earlier this year after being told that because he wasn’t a regular contributor to the Williams Fund, he would have to donate $5,000 to keep his seats.

The demand was the result of a Williams Fund survey that found that 121 season-ticket holders with prime seats were not regular contributors.

Bodle said he resented the notion that fans who gave more money were somehow more loyal or more deserving than those who gave less.

“I told them what they could do with their tickets,” Bodle said. “In all those years, no one ever told me to whom or how much I had to contribute.”

He added, “I haven’t been to or watched a game since.”

Told that next year’s donations for tickets would be partially tax-deductible, Bodle said he wasn’t surprised.

“They can get away with it, I’m sure,” he said. “But that doesn’t make it right.”