April 5, 2018

‘How Much Can I Claim For Donating My Vehicle?’

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The amount you can claim as your tax deduction for donating a vehicle depends on how the charitable organization will treat your vehicle once you have donated it. They will either sell it at auction and get the gross proceeds or use it for other purposes where you can opt to claim its fair market value.

How to Determine the Value of Your Donated Vehicles

The charity that you choose needs to be able to tell you whether or not you can get your tax deduction through gross proceeds only or its fair market value.

• Gross proceeds

Usually, a charity will sell the vehicle you have donated. The value of your vehicle donation is the gross proceeds the charity will get after your vehicle is sold.

The amount will be listed in the required acknowledgment letter that the charity will be giving you. This will be the amount you can claim as a tax deduction for your donated vehicle.

• Fair market value

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) explains fair market value as the selling price of a vehicle to which both buyer and seller agrees. In this case, neither the buyer nor the seller can be an auto dealer. They both must be private parties.

What makes this a rather complicated matter for donors is that you can only claim a vehicle’s fair market value as your tax deduction under any of the four specific conditions as cited in IRS rules. These are:

• When the charity auctions your vehicle and it gets sold for $500 or less

In this case, you can either claim your vehicle’s final selling price or its fair market value, whichever is the bigger amount.

• When the charity makes significant improvements on the vehicle you donated before auctioning it
• When the charity plans to use the vehicle
• When the charity plans to sell or give the vehicle to a needy individual at a price less than the fair market value

You can check out the Kelly Blue Book to determine the fair market value of your vehicle. The book offers online calculators that help evaluate your vehicle’s value.

If you are still searching for a reliable organization that will effectively utilize your vehicle donations to support a good cause, then your search ends now! Veteran Car Donations is that organization. We are here to reach out and provide vital and much-needed assistance to our suffering veterans through vehicle donation.

How Does It Work?

If you have an old car that you no longer find useful or is costing you a lot of money in repairs, why not simply donate it to us? We will sell your vehicle at auction where it will be sold at its highest possible price.

We accept nearly all types of vehicles for donation, even those that are not in running condition on a case-by-case basis.

We conduct vehicle donation programs all over the United States, so you can reach out to us and donate a vehicle wherever you are by simply calling us at 877-594-5822.

We use the proceeds from the sale of your donated vehicles to finance the various programs of our non-profit organization partners that are all geared towards improving the living condition of our struggling veterans and their families.

These veterans deserve all the help we can give. They are our nation’s heroes, our brave warriors who fought for us to preserve our freedoms and protect our nation’s security when they were still active-duty soldiers deployed abroad to confront those who wanted to harm us.

Let’s Get Started!

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If you’re ready to help our heroes or if you still have some questions to ask before you do so, contact us at 877-594-5822. We’ll make everything clear to you. You may want to check out our FAQs page. If you’re ready to donate a car, you can fill out our online donation form. Call us and get substantial tax deductions for your generous car donations!

Last Updated: August 24th, 2023