The impact of linear loss on the evolution of screening-photovoltaic (SP) spatial solitons in biased photovoltaic-photorefractive crystals is investigated.Our numerical study indicates that the loss not only results in the decrease of the amplitude of the soliton beam,but also results in the change of the shape of the soliton beam.For the bright SP soliton,the soliton width increases as the propagation distance increases for the SP soliton with low-intensity at the input,whereas the soliton width decreases initially and then increases as the propagation distance increases, and there is a propagation distance in which the soliton width returns to its value at the input for the SP soliton with high-intensity at the input.For the dark SP soliton,the soliton width increases as the propagation distance increases whether the SP soliton has low-or high-intensity at the input.Though the effect of loss on the evolution of SP soliton can be ignored if the propagation distance is short enough,the loss is eventually expected to destroy these solitons at long distance.