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April 28, 2015 at 08:22 AM
Many of your clients may be writing out checks to the Internal Revenue Service this week and wishing they had come up with a few more deductions sometime in 2014. One relatively painless way to reduce both income tax and the size of an estate is to make charitable contributions of non-cash goods the client no longer needs, especially valuable items like jewelry, cars, even real estate.
But document the value of donated items to the standards of the IRS can be cumbersome and exacting. The charity needs to be heavily involved as well, so it helps if the client finds a recipient with whom he or she has an existing relationship. It can also be difficult to find a charity that knows what to do with a valuable but odd gift, such as a private plane.
The IRS’ rules are different depending on the value of the donated assets. Property donations over $5,000 require a written and signed acknowledgment from the charity. The acknowledgment must describe whether the charity provided anything of value in exchange for the gift, and the value of those goods or services.
They also require an appraisal of the property’s value from a qualified appraiser. The appraisal causes a headache for many taxpayers because of the hoops one must jump through: The appraisal must be conducted within 60 days of the date of the donation; and the client must use an appraiser from an IRS-approved list.
Also, appraisals can be expensive (the cost can’t be considered part of the donation). And the IRS forbids the receiving organization from paying for it in any way — the donor must foot the bill.
A few items do not require an appraisal, such as the obvious exception of stocks or mutual funds. In addition, an appraisal is irrelevant for property the donor has owned for less than a year; in this case, the deduction is limited to the property’s original cost.
Special restrictions apply to donations of vehicles, planes, and boats. In these cases, the donor’s deduction is limited to the gross proceeds from its sale once the charity disposes of it, rather than an estimate of its value.
