Cars Helping America

While donating a car to charity can be a rewarding experience in many ways, it could leave you open to fraud and other threats if you’re not careful. Here are a few tips that can help keep you safe from the crooks and other frustrating things that could leave you feeling less than charitable.

•    Make Sure to Write It Over to the Charity: If the car charity you’re donating to asks you to leave the owner lines on the title empty you’d better find another charity. Many charities auction off the donated car without changing the information on the title. If the donated car were to then be used for any sort of illegal activity because you were the last known owner you could find yourself in court in relation to the crime and the criminals involved.

•    Be Careful How You Go About Pricing Your Car: Don’t list the Kelley Blue Book price for your car. If it was worth anything over $500 you’ll want to have some proof from the car charity as to the value it sold for at auction to prove its value. If you label the donated car at a rate much higher than it is worth without corresponding evidence of its value from the car charity you could be facing legal action from the IRS.

•    Keep Everything: If you donate a vehicle to a car charity you’re making a substantial donation that needs to be recorded on your taxes. In order to file that you donate car you’ll need all the evidence you can gather that it was indeed written over to a car charity and sold for a specific value. This is what proves the car was accepted and for what value, without this information there’s no way to prove that what you’ve reported is accurate and you could come under suspicion of fraud. Never hesitate to keep anything related to the donation in any way, the more proof there is the truer your tax benefit claim is to the IRS.