What are the tax rules concerning charitable donation of used clothing?

its fair market value and it must be in good or excellent condition

This is your best friend

Deduct it

You can claim up to $500 wiithout providing any detail of what sort if non-cash contributions you made. If you claim over $500 then you must attach a Form 8283 providing detail of who, what, where, when and how much you donated. The Form 8283 does not provide enough space to detail out what specific items you donated. I usually use descriptions like Clothing, Toys, Household Goods, Furniture without providing specifics. If you claim a deduction of $5,000 or more, then you have to have an appraisal report.

Goodwill, St Vincent de Paul and the other big charities have forms they weill give you to document your contribution. In general they do not inventory what you donated and leave it to you to provide the detail. The IRS isn't in the habit of challenging deductions for charitable contributions as the tax revenue isn't worth the bad publicity has been my experience.

LINK

I make a spreadsheet yearly with the average of these values. Have I ever actually used it for anything? No, but it's there if I need it.

thanks to all...very good info...

The goodwill receipts are usually pretty vague like "2 bags of clothes and shoes" so as long as you keep it under 5k there's no way to prove it wasn't worth what you claim because it's long gone.