I just have to say it's been a great week.  As a Diamondbacks season ticket holder, I must salute my team who is in first place in the NL West!  Way to go!  It was also great to find that management worked out a deal with Eric Byrnes, who is one of my favorite players to watch. 

Now onto the real estate related part.  Since I'm a big fan of the game, I could postulate on the many correlations between baseball and real estate, but I won't bore you... at least not today.  However, I will say that building good teams and working hard is very important in both industries.  

What I would like to talk about is using tickets as gifts.  I've given tickets to clients who I know enjoy the game and I feel good about personalizing the gift.  However, recently I sat by a business man I met at a game who informed me that every time we give tickets as a gift, we need to track the date of the game, price of the tickets, name of the giftee and their social security number.  Has anyone else ever heard of this?  While he shared his personal experience about being audited and having these things requested for the write off, I find it hard to believe we should have to go to such lengths. 

At this point, I think I would prefer to give a different gift or forget the write off rather than ask for a social security number since I don't believe most people would feel comfortable disclosing that information to receive a gift.  Has anyone else run into this before or been audited without this information?  Anyone have good advice about an approach I could use with those I give a gift to or would you avoid the situation?