Anyone ever donate their car to charity? (1 Viewer)

[Jason L.]

I have a 1990 Acura Integra with 194,000 miles that is on it's last legs.
I wouldn't be able to sell it, nor would I be able to sell it to someone in good faith.
There are charities that will take the car and then allow you to write it off on your taxes as a charitable deduction.
What I want to know is, what is the process like and how much can you deduct? Will the charity use some sort of blue book value for the deduction, or basically let you determine how much the car is worth?

 

[EugeneR]

As far as I know, the process is really simple--they come and pick it up, take your pink slip and hand you a receipt. I'm pretty sure that they let you decide the value of your car. If however, you seriously overstate its value the IRS may have a few questions for you.

 

[Michael Fennessy]

Eugene is right. Simple and they will make suggestions about what to take the write off for (at least they did for me) You can do it for whatever you want to though. As a matter of fact the tlod me to write it off for $4,000. Mind you, the gas in the tank was actually worth more than the car, but I figured they must know what people can get away with. good luck,
Mike

 

[Mike Broadman]

I donated by 1980 Buick LeSabre to the Kidney Foundation. I don't remember who came up with the write-off value, but it was $500. The car was so old and a complete wreck.
The process was very simple. They just came by and towed it away. I got the proper paperwork in the mail, which I then gave to my accountant.

 

[Greg D]

I donated an old sail boat to the Salvation Army a few years back. As far as the IRS is concerned just be sure your valuation is reasonable.

 

[Bob McLaughlin]

For some reason, I read the word "donate" as "detonate"! That got my attention!
I junked my car a few years back and regret not giving it to charity. Not only could they probably use it, I could have used that tax deduction! But at the time, I was just happy getting rid of the thing.

 

[KDHM]

I saw on Judge Judy once where some woman had donated her car, the car was then striped by the company that the charity sold the car to and then left on the side of the road, since it was still in her name she was fined by the police. She won but it seemed like a big hassle for her, so I would make sure the pink slip is transferred when you give up the car.
kd

 

[Jason L.]

An update on the situation:

I called the charity that does this. I asked them what the value of the donation would be. They said exactly what others said, that I would fill in the value. I asked where I would get the value from. The lady suggested getting the value from Kelly Blue Book, or kbb.com.

Now mind you, when I checked the value on edmunds.com the value of my 1990 Acura with 193,000 miles [and on its last legs] was $800.

Well I punched in the statistics on the car [Kelly Blue Book does not have a field to enter the condition of the car like Edmunds] and the Retail Value that they gave for my car was....................$4,885!!!!!!!!!!

I was in shock. Needless to say, I will make sure to donate my car before the end of the year.

 

[Richard Cooper]

I think if I tried to offload my motor to a charity, they'd laff and run away

 

[MikeM]

Earlier this year I donated a car to the Volunteers of America. They even have an online setup to really make the process easy. Here is a link to their program.
It was simple and painless.

 

[Mark C.]

I tried to donate my crushed (but still driveable) 1987 Nissan Sentra to a couple of different organizations. But they wouldn't take it because of the body damage. So much for that.

 

[Joseph Young]

I've donated two of my previous cars to charity, once to my old '81 Honda Accord, and another time to a beaten up old '86 Honda Civic. The reason being, my cars had a tendancy to die of natural causes... and what better way to save a little in income tax? I can't remember the name of the charity, as it was several years ago, but these kinds of organizations are eager to accept donations and easy to find on the internet.
On both ocassions, the Towing Company handled much of the transfer of title and provided me with a receipt from the Children's Center which I could use as a write-off. I never had any problems, since everything was done rather officially, albeit on the street with a surly tow truck driver .
In both cases, I think the car was then stripped of parts which were sold off for $$ to benefit the center.
Joseph

 

[Mike Lenthol]

Now would those organization accept any type of car? Say something worth about 12k blue book, which I would be able to sell for no more than 10k to a private party, even less with a trade in,...