Does donating your car really work?

December 18, 2004 7:43 PM

I have a car that is past its usable life. I'd like to donate it to charity A quick search yields a huge amount of organizations that will "take care" of it for me - so many that the whole thing is starting to feel like a scam. Has anyone donated a car to charity before? Did the promised tax deduction work out? Anyway I could choose a local non-profit to give the money to? The car is currently undriveable.

Tax laws change next year so I need to get this done quickly - by the way, I live in Massachusetts if it matters.

Oh, nevermind

posted by dhacker to Law & Government (6 answers total)

WBUR (the Boston NPR station) accepts cars for donation and it's not very likely that they're part of a scam.
posted by spaghetti at 10:07 PM on December 18, 2004

I'd try posting it on freecycle first. If you want to give it away, there are people there who'd be willing to work on it and stuff who desperately need cars.
posted by u.n. owen at 12:09 AM on December 19, 2004

Our local public radio station takes them as well. I don't believe that it's a scam, but what the hell do I know? I just know that they took a couple of our junky ass cars out of our driveway for us.
posted by damnitkage at 4:41 AM on December 19, 2004

I didn't know public radio stations took cars for donation. The two I know about are the American Lung Association and the Volunteers of America.
posted by SisterHavana at 10:01 AM on December 19, 2004

One thing to be aware of when you donate your car for tax reasons: Unless you have other itemized deducitons as well, it may not be worth it for tax purposes.

I donated a car a few years ago, worth about $1,000. My standard non-itemized deduction was $3,000. Although I'd also given some money to charity that year, my itemized deductions didn't add up to $3,000. So I ended up taking the standard deduction.

The folks I donated the car to took it off my hands, which was nice. They hopefully used to for a good cause, which was also nice. But I didn't get any tax advantage for giving it to them.

I imagine that homeowners or people with lots of charitable giving/work-related expenses probably have high enough deductibles to make a car donation financially worthwhile.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 11:10 AM on December 19, 2004

I donated a wrecked car to Make-A-Wish this year. Here's your local chapter. They make between $200-300 usually from insurance car auction dealers (or more, but wrecks/lemons are mostly worth the metal). Mine was happily received, although it required over $2,000 worth of repairs. I will be able to claim the full amount of $5,000 for this tax year.

If you're a home owner, and pay mostly interest on your mortgage, this is a good thing. If not, you may not find the deduction of any worth whatsoever (see croutonsupa....whatever above), which I know to be true, because I tried to donate the car last year before we bought a home. Not a good idea. And it's true about the law changing come 2005 - look it up!

You might want to hurry.
posted by ValveAnnex at 12:32 PM on December 19, 2004