Charitable Contribution Deduction

Truth in Ray Finkle's statement.

I think the red flag goes up when its more than 10-15% of your income though. If you claim that high, you better have receipts to back up every penny.

I know the rules of what I need to do. I am a CPA. I am looking for a tax expert such as Poodle to tell me what is a reasonable amount of dollars to deduct on a tax return for a married couple without kids. Obviously $20,000 is a lot. $2,000 isn't.

None of the organizations we donated to wrote the details of what we donated. We have 5 receipts from donations made throughout the year. We donated furniture, clothes and some CPU equipment.

I'm just wanting to make sure it isn't going to raise any red flags if we deduct around $2,000 in charitable contributions spread out over 5 different receipts. As long as the receipts are under $500 each I don't think the receipt has to detail what exactly was donated.

I'm not going to post our salary info, but my wife is a Manager at a public accounting firm and I am a CPA working in industry. I assume that deducting ~$2,000 would be well within the limits you just mentioned.

ETA: Our receipts are signed and dated by the organization. The organization was good will, so obviously the receipts are valid.

Take pictures of what you donate. Write down every piece of clothing you give. I normally use thrift shop value for my figure. 10 to 15 % of the purchase price will suffice. The more documentation you have, the more likely your deduction will survive the audit.

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Take pictures of what you donate.

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This is overkill. I am on the very conservative side as I am a CPA and I am not looking to lose my license for deducting stuff I shouldn't deduct, but that is overkill.

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They can ask "Where's your purchase receipt?"

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Seriously, so they would want you to dig back through 10yrs of receipts to find where you originally bought the item?


Sounds like they could, but have they EVER done this?

From the Turbo Tax (Intuit) Wesbite, so take it fwiw (updated for 2013 Tax Year)

Contributing Househould Items

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Contributing household items
Donating used goods such as clothing, linens, electronics, appliances and furniture gets you a write-off for the item's fair market value at the time you donated it, which may be considerably less than what you originally paid.

The IRS has a helpful booklet on this subject, Publication 561: Determining the Value of Donated Property.

For items valued at more than $500, you'll need to fill out Form 8283 and attach it to your return. On this form you have to describe each item over $500 that you donated, identify the recipient, and provide information about the value of the item, including your cost or adjusted basis.

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Also, this is directly from the IRS

Charitable Contributions

Hope that helps a bit.

ETA: For donated "items", it looks like you only need to have a solid FMV for deduction purposes. I can't imagine they would deem it reasonable for you to have a purchase receipt for something that could be 5-10 years old.

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So if multiple items add up to over $500, you don't need to fill out that form, just claim them as long as you have the sheets from Salvation Army?

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I have taken this to mean each individual receipt. In other words if you claim $600 on a receipt, I think the 8283 needs to be filled out.

If you intend to claim over $500 of deduction, then you have to attach Form 8283 to your return. You will have to report the details of each donation you made. This will include the amount of deduction per donation. As long as none of the donations exceeds $5,000 you do not need to have independent verification of the amounts you report.

Claiming $2,000 of non-cash charitable deductions would not be unusual. People do it all the time if they move, remodel or even redecorate their house. People with small children who outgrow their clothes and toys also tend to have significant charitable contributions.