2006 Membership Dues Announced

he ASA membership dues for 2006 will be as follows:

Active $450
Affiliate $225
Resident $25
Educational $225
Educational (student) $25
Medical Student $10

This information is being provided for those who wish to renew their membership in December. The 2006 dues statements will be mailed to the membership in December 2005, although members may renew their dues online through the “Members Only” section of the ASA Web site <www.ASAhq.org>.

Dues payments are deductible by members as an ordinary and necessary business expense; in the case of membership dues paid to a section 501(c)(6) organization such as ASA, this means the “business expense” deduction will be denied to the extent that membership dues are spent by the organization on lobbying.

At the time of the distribution of the dues statements for the coming year, ASA is required (in order to avoid paying a proxy tax) to provide members with an estimate of what the nondeductible lobbying percentage will be for that year. For 2006 the percentage of dues related to lobbying is 8 percent. Therefore 8 percent of dues paid to ASA in 2006 will be disallowed as a deduction. This percentage also will be included on your 2006 dues statement.

Anesthesiology groups paying association membership dues on behalf of an employee (e.g., resident, anesthesiologist assistant) should bear in mind that they must include in the employee’s taxable income on Form W-2 that portion of the association’s dues that the association reports to the Internal Revenue Service as attributable to lobbying expenses.