Feb 26, 2008

Calculating my non-cash charitable contributions - and trying something new in 2008

I am nearly done with the tax organizer that our accountant sent us. There are only two things left to do, and I am waiting to hear back from our accountant before I do one of them. I'm dreading the other thing, however - namely, calculating our non-cash charitable contributions.

I've written before about how I log every item donated before it goes into a bag and out the door. Unfortunately, knowing what I donated and putting a dollar value on it are not the same thing. And over the course of a year, we donate hundreds, if not thousands, of items. I have a long list of shirts, pants, books, kitchen goods, and other items that we donated throughout the year. Now I have to give everything a fair market value, and add it all up. Ugh!

An anonymous comment on last year's post recommended DeductionTraQ, a free service for tracking donations. It apparently uses eBay sales prices to determine FMV. I'm going to give it a try for 2008 - I'm hoping it will be a gift to my future self (i.e., the self who will be in exactly the same position one year from today).

In the meantime, I have no choice but to go through all the receipts and lists and draw up a list for our accountant (some of it is done, otherwise I would try DeductionTraQ right now). The good news is, we donated more than ever this year, so we'll be getting a nice deduction when it's all done.

1 comment:

Michele said...

Maybe this will help? http://www.cheapskatemonthly.com//store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=99&idCategory=19