Why do people donate a car?

[MonkeyMama]

I just don't see how that's going to work. Does that mean I cannot claim a tax deduction until the charity sends me a letter saying how much they sold my car for? And what if they take a while to sell it or they don't sell the car at all? There are too many gray areas.

Yes, you get a tax reporting (like a 1099).

It's actually not very grey. IT's all spelled out pretty clearly (as opposed to much murky tax law). Don't remember it all off the top of my head, but I believe you can claim blue book if they don't sell it (some charities keep the car). But the ones that sell it, sell it quickly and send you a form. They rather have the cash than your car, so they don't hang on to them for long. But there is plenty of clarification for the charities who keep the cars or donate them to the needy.

The charities keep on top of it. They need to stay on top of all that to make it easy on the donors.

[noppenbd]

I just don't see how that's going to work. Does that mean I cannot claim a tax deduction until the charity sends me a letter saying how much they sold my car for? And what if they take a while to sell it or they don't sell the car at all? There are too many gray areas.

We donated a car a little while ago to a charity and it was one of the smoothest transactions I've every done related to a vehicle. The KBB value was only $300 so it was not worth it to try and sell IMO. The towing co hired by the charity called, scheduled a time to pick up the car, and came and picked it up. We got a letter about 2 weeks later with the sale price ($1000!). So we ended up getting a $250 tax deduction with no work whatsoever, plus felt really good about our charity getting the money.

[feh]

We've donated one car. We did it for a combination of reasons already mentioned: tax deduction and helping others.

That was before the IRS changed the rules, however. We were able to deduct the blue book value, which was much more than we would've been able to sell the car for. Can't do that any longer.

[Coleroo]

I would say there are many people who do it for the sheer convenience of it. I know I would! To me, selling a car seems like so much of a hassle...I've tried it before and really don't like it. Sometimes a thousand bucks or so is simply not worth the hassle it would take to get it advertised and sold, so the convenience of having someone just come and haul it off - while getting an easy tax break for it - is very tempting.

Especially when it's an older car, if you put it in the classifieds most folks try to talk you way down on your price or want a "perfect" car (what do they expect for 500 or 1000 bucks???). My dad's even sold a car where the person never even returned to pick it up (AFTER they'd paid money!)..but that's a whole other subject..haha