Is Donating the house for Fire Department for training tax deductable?

[Anonymous]

One of former coworkers mentioned to me that his friend donated an old house for the fire Department for training before they built a new house. They were able to deduct the structure value as charitable donation in the tax return. But this was at least 5 years ago. Anyone knows if this is still a legal tax deduction or if IRS disallow this? Thanks.

[Anonymous]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2010/11/15/fire-department-donation-nixed/

[Anonymous]

It was ok to do this many years ago. I heard IRS started to audit people for this deduction recent years and disallow this...

[Anonymous]

It was an old scam. Kirk Herbstreit (the sports announcer) got busted for it.

[Anonymous]

We know someone who did it in Vienna about 6 years ago.

[Anonymous]

Those aholes at the irs . How do they sleep at night.

[Anonymous]

I thought you could do this for cars, ie donate the car to a firehouse or rescue squad and deduct full value bc used for training purposes. At least as of 2004.

[Anonymous]

It's still an open question. There's an IRS advisory opinion from the 1970s that people use as the basis. A court case a few years disallowed the deduction, but only because the taxpayer didn't do the appraisals correctly. The court never reached the question of whether the deduction was proper. We donated our house in Fairfax County in 2008 and took the deduction. The 3-year audit period has now passed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's still an open question. There's an IRS advisory opinion from the 1970s that people use as the basis. A court case a few years disallowed the deduction, but only because the taxpayer didn't do the appraisals correctly. The court never reached the question of whether the deduction was proper. We donated our house in Fairfax County in 2008 and took the deduction. The 3-year audit period has now passed.

There's a 2012 Tax Court case disallowing the deduction based on Virginia law. I wouldn't try it in Virginia. Donate the house's materials to a deconstruction firm and take your deduction that way.