Tax Guru-Ker$tetter Letter
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Sell or Donate Old Vehicles?
A common question, such as this one I received today:
We have an old mini van that the company owns. We want to get rid of it. Would you suggest donating it or selling it? The Kelley Blue Book value is $5,000. Personally I think it will be a hard sell.
My response, with handy links added:
From a pure dollars & cents approach, you're better off selling it for as much as you can get for it.
Even though the theoretical Blue Book may be $5,000, you would technically be limited to a deduction for what it would actually sell for in the real world. IRS is cracking down hard on these kinds of donations; even checking with the charity to see how much they got for it and penalizing people for claiming inflated Blue Book values.