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Tighter
rules for donating vehicles loom
By
Susan Tompor, Free Press Columnist
December
15, 2004
The
quick-and-easy tax break for car donations will soon
be roadkill.
Beginning
Jan. 1, it's going to be far less lucrative for taxpayers
to donate their old cars, trucks and boats to a qualified
charity in order to take a tax deduction. So you might
want to be even more charitable within, say, the next
16 days.
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Driven
to donate
By
Kim Leonard, For The Tribune Review
Sunday,
July 18, 2004
As
many as 1.2 million vehicles ranging from clunkers that
won't start to well kept recent models are donated annually
to Goodwill, the National Kidney Foundation, the Salvation
Army and other organizations nationwide that then sell
them, usually at auction.
But
there is widespread concern about federal legislation
that could pass this fall, setting tougher standards
for tax deductions on car donations and possibly curbing
interest in giving.
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Car-Donation
Programs Threatened by Legislation
By
Kathy M. Kristof, LA Times
July
4, 2004
You've
heard the ads on the radio: Donate your car to us, the
pitch goes, and in return you'll get a charitable deduction
for its full, fair-market value.
It
turns out that many donors appear to have gotten full
market value, and then some.
A
General Accounting Office study released in December
found a huge disparity between what taxpayers were deduct-
ing and what charities were receiving. Taxpayers wrote
off $654 million in auto donations for the 2000 tax
year, but charities received only about 5% of that value,
the GAO found.
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New
Publications Focus On Car Donations
Jul
2, 2004
Washington
- Internal Revenue Service officials today announced
the release of two new publications dealing with car
donations as part of an effort to help taxpayers avoid
potential pitfalls when they donate automobiles to charities.
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Middlemen
drive vehicle donations industry
By
Joshua L. Kwan, SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
Apr.
18, 2004
The
ads are everywhere: Donate your car, help the needy,
get a tax break in return -- everybody wins.
Cynthia
Schwager heard one of those pitches from the California
Council of the Blind and decided it was the perfect
solution to her 1994 Ford Taurus with the bum engine.
So,
like hundreds of thousands of Americans each year, she
gave her car to a nonprofit group.
What
she didn't know is that most of the proceeds would go
to overhead expenses for the car-donation program --
and to the middleman company that runs it. In 2002,
the latest year for which figures are available, the
Council of the Blind received just 17 percent of the
proceeds from vehicles sold on its behalf.
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Treasury
Seeks New Rules on Car Donation Tax Breaks
FOXNEWS.COM,
Associated Press
Tuesday,
January 13, 2004
WASHINGTON
— The Treasury Department (search), responding to evidence
that taxpayers who donate cars to charities tend to
overstate their value, asked Congress to impose new
restrictions on deductions for donated automobiles.
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GAO
hits car donation disparity
By
Joyce Howard Price, THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December
13, 2003
A
General Accounting Office report released yesterday
found big discrepancies between the dollar amounts many
Americans claim as deductions for car donations on their
tax returns and the money charities actually receive
from the sales of the vehicles.
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Some
get more mileage out of an old car that goes to charity.
But not all donations go smoothly, government warn
By
DEBERA CARLTON HARRELL, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
December
27, 2003
Donated
junkers head for the scrap heap, reliable cars go to
working folks and hot donations -- like that '91 Lexus
and Mazda Miata -- are posted on eBay.
Ka-ching.
When
all goes well with charitable vehicle donations, nothing
is wasted and everybody wins, according to Jim Brown,
program director for the auto donation program of Volunteers
of America/Western Washington in Everett, one of the
oldest and largest such programs in the state. People
who desperately need cars get them for low cost, charities
get a boost and donors avoid hassles, feel good about
helping others -- and get a tax deduction.
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