Giving gift of life may bring tax relief in return

Posted on: Thursday, March 22, 2007

Giving gift of life may bring tax relief in return

By Greg Wiles
Honolulu Advertiser Staff Writer

It may not be the easiest way to cut your tax bill, but the state is considering giving organ and tissue donors a break.

The measure would allow tax deductions from adjusted gross income for lost wages, transportation expenses, lodging costs and other expenses that aren't reimbursed when a Hawai'i resident donates an organ or bone marrow. Up to $10,000 could be deducted.

Luci Dwight, a 34-year-old Kailua resident who donated a kidney to her father four years ago, said there can be a financial burden for people trying to help someone out.

While medical costs are covered, people who are asked to travel to the Mainland or from a Neighbor Island incur airline and hotel costs. Dwight said she missed about six weeks of work and had to fight with an insurance company to recoup some of her pay through temporary disability insurance.

"I'm grateful that I was married," Dwight said. Her husband's paycheck "was enough to cover the mortgage and other expenses."

The pending bill has the support of the National Kidney Foundation of Hawaii, which said there are about 10 other states that have tax deductions for organ donors.

The idea is to remove barriers to organ donations at a time when there are many times more people in need than people making donations, said Glen Hayashida, foundation executive director.

"It's not really an incentive, but a way to lessen a burden for the donor. There's a lot that the donor, in trying to do something good, has to overcome.

LIKE 'CODY'S LAW'

Hayashida said he has never come across someone who said they couldn't contribute to an organ transplant because of financial reasons. But he has run into people who've said they needed to wait until a certain time before it was financially feasible for them.

The Hawai'i bill, SB 967, is similar to legislation in other states and is patterned after "Cody's Law," a measure that passed in Wisconsin in 2004. The bill was inspired by Cody Monroe of Menasha, Wis., who received a kidney from his father, Marty.

The transplant came at a great financial cost to the family because Marty was off work for three months while recuperating, costing the family thousands of dollars in missed income, according to the Web site of Wisconsin state Rep. Steve Wieckert, who sponsored the bill. The legislation received national coverage, including an article in The New York Times.

Hayashida said the Hawai'i bill won't be much of a drain on the state's tax coffers. Even if kidney donors take the maximum deduction, the cost to the state will be $16,000, he said. That calculation uses the maximum annual number of living kidney donors — 33 — in Hawai'i in recent years.

Hayashida said on average, there are 21 living kidney donors per year in the state.

ENCOURAGING DONORS

Dwight said the cost is minor if it encourages people to give an organ or tissue for a transplant. Her father was ill and was a candidate for dialysis when she volunteered to give her kidney to him.

She said the change in her father's health was dramatic, with friends commenting he didn't look like the same person they had known before the operation.

"If you were to see him now, you would say, 'Wow, is this the same guy?' " Dwight said. "For me, it was such a overwhelmingly positive experience."
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DONOR WAIT-LIST HAS 379 PEOPLE

Hundreds of Hawai'i residents are on an organ donor waiting list, with 50 of these having been waiting for a kidney transplant for more than five years, according to the Organ Donor Center of Hawaii.

As of last Friday, there were 379 people on the register, with about 90 percent of these waiting for a kidney. Last year, 22 people who were on the list died before getting a transplant, and 13 people were taken off the list because they were too sick.

A bill pending at the state Legislature, SB 967, is aimed at removing some of the financial burdens of being a living donor by granting state tax deductions for unreimbursed expenses and lost income incurred because of the transplant.

"Ninety-nine percent of the wait-list could receive an organ from a living donor," said Darryl Ing, Organ Donor Center of Hawaii executive director. "We feel the bill will help decrease the financial burden of someone who is a living donor."

The list includes:

# 336 people waiting for a kidney. Five of them also are waiting for a pancreas.

# 41 people waiting for a liver

# 1 person waiting for a pancreas

# 1 person waiting for a heart

Ing said there were 67 transplants in the state last year. Donor organs and tissue also can come from brain-dead patients if approved by families.

Ing said of the about 9,000 deaths in Hawai'i last year, only 60 were eligible to have organs recovered and that typically only half of families say yes to the donations.
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Reach Greg Wiles at gwiles@honoluluadvertiser.com.

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Mar/22/ln/FP703220356.html