.

I have an assignment that needs pics of totalled diesel trucks, preferable at the wreck scene.

? Dramatic Decreases in Automobile Donations in 2005 Hurt Legitimate 501 (c)(3) Non-profit Organizations

Though never a large part of the budgets of most IRS sanctioned non-profit organizations (NPOs), recent rulings by Revenue Service (and instigated upon the recommendations of the General Accounting Office and the Senate Finance Committee) have cut automobile donations down quite a bit. Of course, there are plenty organizations that promote the public good through philanthropic and service missions that have need of automobiles. In 2003, the GAO found over 4,000 of them as being registered non-profits with the IRS and accepting automobile donations.

That said, the volume of donations that originated from automobile donations in most non-profits profiled were minuscule compared with stock and property donations over $500. Clothing and furniture donations to thrift stores represented a large percentage of non-cash donations. availability, automobile donations accounted for only 6% of an average NPO’s budget.

Of course, there is no such thing as the average NPO. What has happened has been an increase in the number of people who are selling their vehicles and putting the proceeds towards their favorite charity or purchasing those stocks that will later be donated when they’ve accrued more value. There are also plenty of charities that actually do the selling themselves and take the time to make sales part of their training mission. This allows automobile donations to get a far higher price in the sale, which is useful if your car should be worth more than $500.

This also means that charities that can use a car directly have great need of automobile donations, even though the ever-present ads encouraging taxpayers to do so have become somewhat less prominent since the 2005 tax law changes. Generally, as ad revenues spent on advertising have gone down, so have the frequency of useful automobile donations, and this has sadly impacted some of the charities that can use those types of donations the most: those that serve a disadvantaged population directly through support or training.

As the practice of wholesale selling cars has gone by the wayside, third-party agencies that facilitate automobile donations have become somewhat less profitable, too. These companies, sometimes founded as non-profit organizations themselves, are now required to perform more accurate bookkeeping. As such, the market has shifted a bit to states that still allow these agencies to operate without oversight and the estimated 5% of third-party agents who handle automobile donations who have a non-profit mission themselves.

Many prominent stories that drove congress to finally act were also noted by the general public. Rates of giving declined precipitously in the 2005 tax season, as deduction rates decreased by as much as 90% when third-party agents handled automobile donations.

This is significant, since nearly all the charitable automobile donations in the United States were actually handled by third-party agents – usually for-profit businesses that are only very loosely regulated. At its peak in 2004, vehicle donation programs were thought to represent nearly $1 billion in reported automobile donations.

Partly the impetus for such legislation is the desire to curb any activity that uses charitable donations for private gain. But perhaps just as important to those in the halls of government are the lost revenues represented by the disparity between the revenues actually reported to NPOs versus the amount deducted from individual returns, even legally according to the law as it was written.

Regardless, charities that continue to benefit greatly from automobile donations include many valuable organizations, such as those who directly serve the poor with gifts of vehicles that can mean the difference between a paying job or not. Sometimes the only place one can find available in their price range is out of the range of public transit. Charities that handle automobile donations thusly are always looking for cars and trucks that require minnimal work to be made drivable and capable of being registered in the state.

Other programs include high school or college classes that teach repair classes with automobile donations. Though the market has fallen out of turning over automobile donations for quick profit, charities that legitimately can use your gift remain.

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Auto Diesel/06_Automobile Donations.txt

I was just curiuos why do people with diesel trucks leave their trucks idling for so long after they get off.

fast diesel trucks at the drag strip!!

My father wanted to get a good kill on the grass in our apple orchard, so he mixed 1 gallon of dieself fuel with the usual amount of RoundUp. Now our apples are turning a bright red and dropping, even those we didn’t use a thinning spray on. It this the result of the diesel fuel? If so, how long of an effect will the diesel fuel have on the trees? What about our crop next year? Will the apples that survive be unedible?

Does anyone knoew if Isuzu is planning to sell their small diesel trucks in the US?

Dodge Cummins takes first place at Central Texas Diesel Dyno Day.

Dan Shawhan pulling his Dodge in Street Diesel Class!

? Special IRS Regulations Regarding Charitable Boat Donation

With the sweeping legislation that caused a steep decline in the amount of money represented by auto donation, boat donation has also suffered a similar loss due to the plugging of a loop hole that was benefiting everyone except the federal government and the charities themselves. However, there are still perfectly legitimate and far more efficient ways to use boat donation to benefit your favorite charity if that is your motivation.

In the past, one could donate a boat, RV, motorcycle, trailer or just about any type of vehicle or appreciated object to a third-party agent that would handle the title transfer and sale. Such boat donations were almost always destined for the wholesale market, as it was faster and cheaper to get a small profit as it was all profit for the third-party agent since very little paperwork or oversight was required in such a low-end market.

By 2005, the rules that had been allowing for-profit organizations to charge exorbitant fees for their services, filing only the most minimal of paperwork and claiming as much as 80% of the wholesale value in fees to the charity, changed. As if by magic, those for-profit companies that legitimate charities had relied upon started pulling out of this now less lucrative market that was now asking for itemized statements of expenses and far stricter bookkeeping.

There have always existed non-profit organizations (NPOs) that took a more efficient approach to boat donation and handled the sale of watercraft to private parties themselves. Under current tax laws, this means that boat donations in excess of $500 are valued at the amount they’re sold for. As such, the deduction from your boat donation depends heavily upon how much effort is put into the sale. Charities that have always practiced their own high value sales have been well-positioned to take advantage of the cars still being donated.

Often, however, the boats offered up for sale from the boat donation market are not in particularly good shpae. This was how even perfectly legitimate uses of boat donation were actually cheating the IRS (and eventually many of the programs and services that rely upon federal funding) out of millions every year. When even a “poor” value was taken from an appraisal book or website, this value wasn’t’ a good representation of most boat donations. Even a boat in “poor” shape still describes one that reliably holds water and not all boat donations could say that.

On the other end of the spectrum, boats and yachts that are worth more than $5,000 are subject independent appraisal when they’re part of a boat donation. This appraisal should jibe with the amount the boat is eventually sold for. If not, both the charitable giver and the selling organization open themselves up to further investigation by federal officials.

Another complication with high value boat donation is the so-called “50% rule.” According to this stipulation, you are only allowed to claim 50% of your income in charitable donation in any given year. So, if you don’t make very much money but inherited a large boat, you may have to sell it yourself and make individual contributions from that money rather than giving the whole boat to charity.

Charitable NPO exceptions to this include educational organizations that take at risk children on fishing trips or help instruct a college class in bass fishing. As improbable as it sounds, a boat donated to the local police department for finding drowning victims is also an accepted type of direct donation.

It is often a matter of personal taste when giving away an old boat (rather than selling it yourself), especially one that isn’t in very good shape. You may have to consider whether it’s worth your while to itemize your tax return for the deductible value of a boat that was only fit for scrap metal.

Often mid- to lower income individuals and families take standard deductions anyhow. As such, donating a boat that isn’t in very good shape is less attractive than recycling options that pay off in hotel vouchers or cruise ship coupons rather than making pretenses about tax deductions from boat donation.

Caution is the new rule of law with boat donation. Contact your favorite charity and ask them how they handle boat donations before you make a decision.
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Auto Diesel/07_boat donation.txt

they are diesel trucks. been sitting for about 5-10 years. any tips before i turn the key?

? Determining the Value of Your Charitable Car Donation and Avoiding Audit

It could be said that the new regulations regarding car donation, going into effect during the 2005 tax season, actually make it easier to avoid audit, since there is far less wiggle room to maneuver within. However, to actually take a legal deduction from your taxes, there will need to be some forms filed and receipts gathered.

The extent to which you are required to prove the worth of your charitable donation, given to a IRS approved 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization (NPO), is determined by the likely value of the gift. That said, one doesn’t always know what the sale of their car will fetch in the marketplace, regardless of what some chart may tell you. The actual price your car donation fetches will be your deductible value, and this can actually be rather low when sold on the wholesale market, especially by a third-party agency that facilitates car donation for NPOs that lack the facilities or manpower to handle such donations themselves.

Begun several decades ago by the Goodwill Corporation to train their employees and recycle unwanted vehicles, car donation programs were designed to be offered by NPOs alone to serve a direct and needy market. In the 1990s, a tremendous upsurge in for-profit organizations that spent a great deal of money on advertisements created a rapidly expanding trend of even lower-middle class individuals using car donation to reap the charitable tax deductions offered by the receiving agents.

When assessing your car donation, one must really consider what it is worth on the market, both if you sell it yourself and if you use another agency to sell it on the wholesale market for you. One can assume anywhere from 20-60% of the value of the retail market in such sales. Since a great many NPOs still use third-party (over 95% being for-profit organizations according to a scathing 2002 investigative article) intermediaries to manage the pickups, title-transfers and sales, you should give some hard consideration to how you want to handle your own car donation.

Many people choose to fix up and sell their own vehicles, preferring to pay tax on that “income” and give the remainder to the charity of their choice. Everyone, after all, takes cash. This way you also act as your own “middle man,” giving your time as well as the donated value of your car. You could even sell that car for scrap, have it hauled away, and give the proceeds to the charity, cutting out that sometimes very expensive middle step of involving a car donation facilitator.

Regardless of how you go about it, a non-cash gift to a charity is likely to fetch less than $250, you don’t need any sort of receipt from the NPO – the IRS will, in this case, take you at your word. All you need to supply is the name of the charitable organization that received your car donation, the date of the car donation, the place the donation took place,

However, if the value of your car donation is $250 or greater, you’ll need to get a receipt from the charity that is officially registered as an NPO or charity by the IRS. If you want to check up on a given charity’s status, they should be able to provide you with a non-profit tax ID number that you can then check against the IRS database. This receipt should be dated and indicate what use the vehicle was to be put to, even if it is just for sale.

Car donations destined for immediate sale are typically not valued for tax purposes until the sale has been made. Instead, one will receive a temporary receipt that indicates a transfer of title and a forthcoming receipt to be used for determining your deduction.

This is most often true of vehicles worth over $500. Such vehicles must be accompanied by Form 8283 (section A only) that the authorized charity issues along with their own receipt of car donation monies. In a perfect world, those separate car donation and charitable income figures will match up with each other as well as the amounts people are deducting from their personal or family income taxes, as they assuredly didn’t before 2005.

Sale values over $5,000 must also be accompanied by an appraisal from an independent agent that can verify the fair market value of any car donation. Now that one must present proof of how much their car donation earned at auction, there is little reason to make any kind of error when valuing your car donation for deductible purposes.

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Auto Diesel/08_car donation.txt

The cost of diesel fuel is almost
Isn’t that a big expense, and one of the reasons for the high cost of gasoline?
I’snt all gasoline transported by diesel trucks?

I am writing a story and need to know what will happen to diesel fuel when it stays gelled for a long time. Say 100000 gallons stored in -40 weather for 5 years. Then heated back up to liquefy the diesel again. Would the fuel still be good to use? Would we have to filter it first before we should use it?
2 days ago – 1 day left to answer.

www.1320Video.com – Plenty of people have seen twin turbo vette’s, but how many of you have seen a DIESEL twin turbo vette?!?!? Here’s a teaser video. www.1320video.com

I have never owned a diesel and I know they have glow plugs and need to warm up longer than a regular car, but is it really necessary (or even beneficial) to leave them running while parked. I regularly see these trucks idling outside of convenience stores and other businesses while the owner is inside.

I also see people start their trucks and let them idle for ages while they load them up.