After
Your Sale: How to Value Donations to Thrift Shops
You've
completed your sale and you have some things left over. Instead of dumping them
in the trash it's a good idea to haul them to the nearest thrift shop. Uncle Sam
will reward your efforts by making the fair market value of the items tax deductible.
How to determine fair market value for a used item can be hard. Here are a couple
of ideas on how to determine what that stuff is worth:
Jean
Chatzky's article indicates that the IRS suggests browsing
classified ads, thrift stores, and eBay to determine the value of your items.
eBay
has become so valuable as a method of determining value of items that the Intuit
program ItsDeductible uses eBay's vast database of transactions to determine how
much something is worth. Another way to use eBay databases would be to go to Andale.com
and use their eBay pricing
tools.
