Now I’ve heard everything! Today I came across a recent article talking about donating a car to a charity to get a great tax deduction. That’s a new one on me! I was like “What the ….!”.

At first I thought it was just plain crazy, but the more I read about the more it seemed to make sense.

According to the article, if you have an older car under say $5000, then it makes more sense to donate it than to sell it or trade it in - the theory being you won’t get the full market value for a trade in, but a charity will be happy to give you a receipt for the full market value. That’s then classed as a donation to charity and you can then claim that back in your tax calculations.

I’m still not sure I’m convinced, but well, I’ll let you read about it and make up your own minds. I’ll admit I’m still a little fuzzy on how it works, but I think it’s definitely worth looking into further.

It’s worth pointing out that if your car is worth over $5000 then you’re probably better off selling it on the private market.

What do you think about this? Would you donate your car to a charity to get a tax break?

I guess in theory this could apply to other things too. Perhaps we should all donate our old computers. We sure can’t sell them, but perhaps they’d be useful to a charity and we could use it as a tax deduction as well.