Cars for charity

Nichard Dixon

I'm in the US presently and it is notable here how charities ask people to give them their old car

e.g. http://www.kars4kids.org/‎

I've never heard of this in Ireland as a routine measure. Why in one place and not the other?

Peregrinus

Until recently, if you gave your car to charity in the US you got a tax deduction based on the value of a car of that make, model and vintage, taken from a standardised table of valuations.

If your car was a rusting pile of crap by comparison with the typical car of that make, model and vintage, claiming the tax deduction might net you more than selling the car.

Hence, lots of people gave crappy cars to charity. The charity would sell the car for what they could get, which was more than $0 but, often, not much more. Still, as far as the charity is concerned, not much more than $0 is still better than $0, so they were happy to take the car. But the donor got the bulk of the benefit of this transaction, at the taxpayers' expense.

I think they have now changed the system, so that if you donate your car to charity they have to give you a document stating what they have sold it for, and you then get a deduction for that figure.

Special Circumstances

Spotted one of those ads in San Francisco. Didn't realise they were that common.
Strange place - one corner of the block you have a guy sleeping in a car (if he's lucky compared to many of the misfortunes), and at the other end you have a Tesla parked outside an expensive hipster deli / organic food store.