Has anyone Donated a car before?

66chevyIISS

I have a 1996 Acura 2.5TL with 184,000 miles on it. The car runs and drives, but it will need some work done to it. Right now it blue books around $3700. If I were to sell it I would honestly be happy with getting around $1,500 for it. I really don't want to have to deal with selling it however and people still complaining about problems with it even though its well below blue book value.

What I would really like to do is donate it to a local highschool or community college shop. Supposedly you can claim the fair market value of the car with a donation, but is there any fine print they don't tell you about?

Would selling it for $1000-1500 be better then donating it and claiming say $3,200 at the end of the year?

If anyone has done this before let me know.

danger boy

here you go..all the info you will ever need.

http://www.donate-car-for-charity.com/?gclid=CImsx6KLgZICFRkGagodiXa39A

dragon1952

Claim fair market. As long as it's fixable what the heck. They probably have volunteers that fix them for free anyway. I don't think there's any 'fine print' in the way you mean. I have donated a car that was running but needed a little work and I claimed fair market.

sucks2beme

Normally, selling it would work out better.
The only time it helps is if you're right on the line between
tax brackets.
I donated a rust bucket about 20+ years ago.
A month later some punk kid almost ran me off the
road in it. I took a moment for me to realize it was
my old car!

Rivrrat

I've donated a car before, and took mid book for it, but now the IRS wants an appraisial for the true value, so it's not as convenient.

Thanks to the IRS, I won't do it again.

cambir

If you donate to a charity that accepts vehicles on a regular basis, they will usually provide you paperwork showing the value of your donation for tax purposes.

I think we donated to the Treehouse (IIRC) organization in Seattle.

66chevyIISS

I ended up selling it on CL for $1600.