After this weekend's festivities are over, USA readers will have a few more days left in the year to get a wonderful tax deduction for 2009 by donating household goods! Thursday, December 31st, is the last day to take advantage of this opportunity this year. Here are some handy tips for making that happen:
- Use the good ol' "One In, One Out Rule" to equalize what you got new for holiday gifts. For every new toy, give one away. For every new sweater or shirt… you get the idea. You'll usually find the momentum from doing this will result in more going out than you planned.
- Choose an area that is really bothering you, like your kitchen or closet or entryway, and make it your project to end the year right. Take advantage of the time off you might have between Christmas and New Year's Day. You have a deadline of Thursday that will be very motivating!
- Get all of what's coming to you. Most people grossly underestimate the value of the household goods they are donating. Here's a tool to find out what values to use: www.itsdeductibleonline.com from Intuit. It's a f*ree tool that allows you to enter your donated items and add them up to get your total deduction value. Did you know that old nightgown you don't want any more can be worth up to $11.00 if still high quality? You'll be surprised. Goodwill also has a printable valuation guide if that works better for you.
- Use our donation worksheet to help you. We have a printable worksheet that helps you write down your donated items as you collect them and note their level of quality, so that when you go to It's Deductible's site you'll have all of the information you need. Click here to visit our F*ree Tips page, and look for it in the left column listed with the other handouts.
- Remember to get a receipt from your favorite charity. I also sometimes take a photograph of my "donation pile" as another record of the deduction.
- Do NOT get hung up on finding "the perfect home" for your items and running your stuff around to ten different places. You have a deadline, remember? I recommend doing one drop-off if you can. If you are looking for a convenient drop-off location, click here for Goodwill's donation site locator tool. Goodwill helps create jobs, so that is a wonderful thing nowadays! I am a big believer in Goodwill's mission and appreciate their having so many locations.
You have your marching orders… let me know how you do in the comments! Would love to know how much the dollar value is of your pile of stuff!
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Good tips–thanks so much. I’m going to print off a half dozen of the donation worksheets and give them to each member of the family. That way, they can keep track of what they put in the donation bag and I won’t have to figure it out for everyone.
Good stuff Laurie. On your last point though (and I totally get the choose one location thing…I’ve had bags of donations live in my car for weeks because I wanted to take it to just the right place), I wanted to encourage your readers to know what items their chosen destination accepts ahead of time. I was so disappointed this fall when I tried to donate two really good condition strollers and two car seats to goodwill, and was told by the employee at the drop off that goodwill does not accept them and would just throw them away. I’m so glad I didn’t just put them in an unmanned collection site! I took them to our local homeless shelter instead.