Appraising a donated income stream?

Cite?

There are other things that generate income, and you can give those away, such as treasury bonds, real property that receives rent, etc. And all of those not only do you get the income out of your taxable income, but you get a deduction for the underlying asset.

The difference, I think, is that when you only give away the income stream and not the underlying asset, the income stream has no basis.

But more important, the general rule is that you are not allowed to assign bare income. If you retain ownership of an asset that generates income, the income will be taxed to you no matter who receives the income. That's not in the statute, but is enunciated in Supreme Court decisions.

My query was based on the premise that I would donate to the charity anything and everything of any sort connected with the property and its associated income stream --"ganz alles" so to speak.

So if you pay nothing to create 100 sonnets the cost basis is zero. But if you sell the rights to a company or person for $50,000, then to that person the cost basis is $50,000.

If you donate the underlying intellectual property, you may be able to get a deduction for that. But you can't simply assign income by itself and have it taxed to someone else.

Exactly.

As has been stated a few times in this thread, if you donate the copyrighted item to a qualifed charity your deduction is the LESSER of fair market value or your basis. If you created the copyrighted item yourself, your basis is probably quite low - the cost of several sheets of paper and the regisration fee charged by the copyright office. Note that your basis is NOT increased by any expenditure that you have already deducted on one of your tax returns.