? Making Car Donations to High Schools
Perhaps the most personally rewarding sort of car donations involves giving your old ride to the local high school for use in their shop class. High schools are considered valid charitable organizations according to the IRS, as are colleges and adult training programs that fulfill a charitable mission.
Since the tax laws regarding car donations were changed in 2005 to stem the tide of fraudulent deductions that were uncovered by several independent reporters and the US General Accounting Office in 2002-3, choosing to make car donations to charities that will fix up the car and put it to good use will help you get the full fair market value for your car in the form of a legal deduction.
Most high schools have a shop program, just as most schools have a budget shortfall these days. Just after music and arts programs, the mechanical arts programs are very often among those programs on the chopping block when budget time rolls around. A healthy stream of car donations to such programs not only emphasizes the need for such training, but can also become a valuable revenue source for the schools in question, making shop classes that much more difficult to cut or limit.
Moreover, the proceeds from the sale of newly renovated car donations can benefit other programs such as arts and music. Even if the purpose of such proceeds are turned right back into trips to the Corvette Hall of Fame for shop class students, a valuable message is sent to those students that their services will be required upon graduation, so perhaps they ought to pay attention.
Indeed, there’s nothing quite like seeing your old jalopy being used to haul a float in the homecoming parade. You can watch it drive by with the satisfaction that money from your car donations is staying in the local community and going to benefit people whose training your town will rely upon for years to come.
Of course, there are limits to just how junky the automobiles used for car donations can be while remaining useful training. Particularly if there are very expensive parts that need to be ordered and can’t simply be repaired. In this case, the school might find itself spending more on parts than the car is likely to get when it’s eventually sold.
It is this sale price that drives the ultimate financial value of car donations as far as the donor is concerned. One of the most important aspects of such ar donations is the amount of deduction that can be claimed. Though you should get a receipt of transfer as soon as a vehicle is donated to the school, the ultimate value will be determined by the final sale price of the vehicle.
This represents your fair market value of the donated car and is often quite a bit higher than if you tried to sell the car yourself without making repairs or if a charitable organization simply sold the vehicle on the open, wholesale market. Even if the car is eventually given away or used to transport the girl’s softball team to away games, such car donations may still be deducted at the fair market value according to publications such as the Kelly Blue Book.
There may be other restrictions. For instance, some high schools stipulate that only car donatations of US manufacture are suitable for their students to work on. This isn’t necessarily a type of bias – they may simply not have metric standardized tools to do the work on foreign autos. If you do have the proper tools to work on your oddball car, you might want to consider throwing those in with any such car donations, to sweeten the deal.
Especially in demand are older or classic cars that have plenty of room and require body work. Vehicles that allow for a mechanical tune up without special diagnostic equipment are also highly prized car donations. Taking all these variables into consideration, your old vehicle might be the very thing for your local high school to refurbish into the lean, mean, driving machine you fell in love with in the first place. Having a plaque on the wall with your name on it isn’t a bad incentive either.
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