Maximizing donations to Goodwill

[Anonymous]

We made numerous trips to Goodwill this year and donated a lot of clothes- with all the trips we donated 20 garbage bags. I did not painstakingly not every shirt, pair of pants, etc and now I'm struggling with how to account for what was donated. Any ideas?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We made numerous trips to Goodwill this year and donated a lot of clothes- with all the trips we donated 20 garbage bags. I did not painstakingly not every shirt, pair of pants, etc and now I'm struggling with how to account for what was donated. Any ideas?

For tax purposes?

http://www.use.salvationarmy.org/use/www_usn20.nsf/vw-text-dynamic-arrays/33CE09196410A2148825770B0054FF7A?openDocument&charset=utf-8

or this:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p561.pdf

So, like you'd deduct maybe $5 for a shirt. If you're in the 25% tax bracket, that'll save you about $1.25 in taxes.

[Anonymous]

OP- yes sorry for tax purposes.

I would be guessing at the amount of shirts, etc. I want to maximize what i can deduct but don't want to be egregious.

[Anonymous]

Also, when we moved two years ago I basically did the same thing. Donated about 50 large garbage backs of clothing. I conservatively estimated each bag was about $100 of donated clothing as each probably had 20 or 25 pieces in it. Pretty sure an IRS auditor would bitch-slap me for that method, but it is probably realistic of the real thrift store value.

[Anonymous]

If you already pay the AMT it doesn't matter how much you try to deduct. It's a waste of time and effort.