Richard L. Garwin
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
P.O. Bor 218
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
C914) 945-2555

»

September 29, 1978

Dr. Sol J. Buchsbaum

Vice President

Network Planning and Customer Services
Bell Laboratories

Room 4E 605

Holmdel, Nd 07733

Dear Sol,

When we had dinner in Washington September 10, I mentioned
to you my efforts over the last decadé or so, along with Pat
Haggerty, to interest the world in a tax credit for
contributions for the support of research in universities.
You expressed the view, I believe, that that might be a good
thing for small organizations, but that Bell Labs would
never be interested in such a tax credit scheme.

My own view is that there must be some level of tax credit
at which any organization would rather give its money to a
university to have research done in a field of interest to
the organization (as closely specified as it can get the
university to work on it), and that it is just a matter of
level of tax credit that we are talking about.

a
You might be interested in my testimony of 04/26/78, which ID
mentioned to you. The second paragraph on page 4 contains
the tax credit proposal.

After my testimony, I was surprised to receive the enclosed
letter from Parker Coddington of Harvard University. You
may be interested in this correspondence and in the H.R.3791
of 1965 which he brought to my attention.

I have been thinking about the viewpoint which I understood
you to express, and I must contess that there is no basis on
which I can understand why an organization, no matter how
big, would turn down the opportunity to do 1.7 times as much
work for the money Ca 30% tax credit versus a 50% deduction
for work done in its own laboratory) or Cif that is not
enough incentive) 5 times as much work for the same money
(90% tax credit instead of 50% deduction). Perhaps I
misunderstood you.

I would really like to obtain other views (preferably
PAGE 2

supporting ones) in this matter, because I hope _to be able
to advance the cause of tax credit for support of research
in universities.

Do let me Know what you think.

.

Sincerely yours,

Richard L. Garwin

Encl:

04/28/78 LTR P.L. Coddington to RLG., with enclosed
H.R.3791.

05/08/78 LTR RLG to P.L. Coddington.

05/08/78 LTR RLG to L.L. Beasley.

04726/78 Testimony to the Subcommittee on Science,
Technology and Space of the Senate Committee on
Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

ce:

Branscomb, IBM
Baker, Bell Labs
Hannay, Bell Labs

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