Donate Clothes and Household Items to Charity (Year-End Tax Tips)
Tuesday December 30, 2008
One of my New Year's Eve traditions is to clean out my closets and take clothes, small appliances, and kitchen items in good condition or better to my local non-profit thrift store. This gets an extra deduction for charitable donations onto this year's tax return.
Just be sure to get a receipt. Since 2007, the IRS has required that all donations be substantiated with a receipt indicating the name of the charity, the date of the donation and the dollar amount of the donation. Non-cash donations must also be assigned a fair market value. To help you determine the value of your donated goods, there's several resources you can turn to. There's the valuation guides published by the Salvation Army and by Goodwill Industries. There's also free software to track your donations including DeductionPro from H&R Block and ItsDeductible from TurboTax.
Comments
Donating things that you are not using or don’t want is a great way to get some extra money in your pocket and give to a worthy cause.
Since our son left for college last year his old beat up car has been sitting in the driveway because he didn’t want to take it to school with him. So we donated it. In addition to the tax break, it gives you a nice feeling to help out others. We read about it here: Should You Donate your car for a tax deduction I have to say this is a great recommendation you make here and it inspires me to get started on my spring cleaning early!