Sotheby's Botticelli will be sold tax free

NEW YORK - The very rare Botticelli that Sotheby's is about to auction with an estimate of 80 million dollars will be sold practically tax free. The painting, which depicts a young man perhaps belonging to the Medici family, is offered for auction by 92-year-old cement billionaire Sheldon Solow who bought it about 40 years ago for just over a million dollars, a fraction of the new rating. Usually a profit of this kind would have been felt on the tax return with a tax of at least 33 million in capital gain. Not for Solow, who donated the Botticelli to his private foundation a few years ago, already saving millions of dollars in tax deductions for philanthropy. The trick is perfectly legal and is frequently used by wealthy Americans to protect various assets from taxation, from securities on the stock exchange to real estate. The Solow Art and Architecture Foundation now owns 99% of the painting - said Stefan Soloviev, Solow's son - and after the sale he will receive the equivalent of the proceeds. The billionaire, whose fortune is estimated at 3.7 billion, had bought the Botticelli in 1982 for 810 thousand pounds, at the time 1.3 million dollars. In 2001 he had transferred ownership of 71% of the painting, valued at the time 40.6 million dollars, to his foundation which in 2015 had received 99% of the painting whose value had more than doubled by then. The Solow Art and Architecture Foundation is based in the builder's iconic skyscraper at 9 West 57 Street which has investment firms and the elite of the luxury pole as tenants. Sotheby's auction is scheduled for January, but Solow has been thinking about the sale for some time, Bloomberg sources said. The arrival of the painting under the hammer of the beater is certainly a disappointment for the many museums that have exhibited it over the years, including the Metropolitan in New York, the NationalGallery in London and the National Gallery in Washington. Botticelli created some of the most important portraits in the Renaissance canon but only a dozen specimens have survived the centuries and almost all are kept in large museums. (HANDLE).