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| Angelika/Mike Schilli |
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Angelika As sure as the Amen in church, taxes are due in America on April 15th. And like everywhere else in the world, at the end of the year, tax-savvy individuals try to make a few tax-saving donations.
In addition to monetary donations, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service also allows donations of clothes to charitable organizations to be deducted from taxes. And since I thought it was urgently necessary to clean out our wardrobe back in December, I'll let you in on how to get a tax deduction on this. Of course, you can't declare the new value of the clothing on your tax return, but rather the so-called second-hand price.
I initially believed naively that the tax office would provide price lists. Far from it. It's a good thing the internet exists, where I found price recommendations. To avoid any difficulties during a potential tax audit later on (in America, you typically don't send certificates or receipts with your tax return; they only need to be presented during an audit), I diligently listed every single piece of clothing. After all, I am the daughter of a tax advisor.
It is important to bring the used clothes to an organization recognized by the tax office, such as homeless shelters, the Salvation Army, or Goodwill. Goodwill is a large, now international, non-profit organization with the goal of providing people with disabilities or other disadvantages with career opportunities through training and employment opportunities. To finance this, Goodwill sells donated clothing and household goods in their own stores.
In San Francisco, there is a large Goodwill store that also accepts donations, located at the corner of South Van Ness and Mission. So I drove up there in our Perlman. In the parking lot, there was a truck trailer, and friendly men immediately loaded my bags of clothes into it.
The tax certificate for the tax office was already prepared. I just had to fill in my name and address, specify the value of the donated clothing, and in a flash, an employee signed it and praised me highly for the attached detailed list (apparently, no one does that), and I gained another experience.
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