Should you donate your car?

Sell or Donate Old Vehicles?

A converstion with a client with a car and a charity he likes.

We have an old mini van that the company owns. We want to get rid of it. Would you suggest donating it or selling it? The Kelley Blue Book value is $5,000. Personally I think it will be a hard sell.

          My response, with handy links added:

From a pure dollars & cents approach, you are better off selling it for as much as you can get for it.

Even though the theoretical Blue Book may be $5,000, you would technically be limited to a deduction for what it would actually sell for in the real world. IRS is cracking down hard on these kinds of donations; even checking with the charity to see how much they got for it and penalizing people for claiming inflated Blue Book values.