 So enter on line 12 the total value of your contribution of property other than by cash or check unless a limit on deducting gifts applies to you. So for more information about the limits on deducting gifts you can see those same limits on the amount that we looked at earlier. If your deduction is limited you may have have a carry over to next year similar kind of process we discussed deduction for gifts other than by cash or check limited. So if your deduction for the contribution of property other than by cash or check is limited you can see publication 526 to figure the amount that you can deduct tax software is of course helpful in that situation valuing contributions of used items. So now we've got the situation which is often kind of problematic or a headache to tax preparers you gave something to charity that was a used item well that's going to be a little bit more difficult to deal with than just giving a cash value to the charity because when you give cash to the charity or a check to the charity or an electronic transfer we know how much was given but if something was given that was a used item it still of course has some value or else the charitable organization is theoretically wouldn't want it but what is that value. So if you give used items such as clothing furniture deduct the fair market value at the time you gave them so then the question is well how in the world am I going to know what the fair market value is because the fair market value is determined by trading things selling things on the fair market and if you have used clothes then it's like you would have to find a buyer that would want the used clothes first of all and then what would be the fair value of that kind of transaction difficult to say which is probably why you're giving it away so it's a theoretical concept that works well for us the fair market value but in practice difficult to determine. So fair market value is what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller when neither has to buy or sell and both are aware of the contributions of the sale so for more details on determining the value of donated property if you want to dive into that in more detail publication 561. So deduction more than $500 so if the amount of your deduction is more than $500 you must complete and attach form 8283 so now you need more detail because you're over the dollar limit when you're giving clothes and whatnot so for this purpose the quote amount of your deduction in quote means your deduction before applying any income limits that could result in a carryover of contributions. So contribution of motor vehicle boat or airplane so now we've leveled up from giving like clothes and things like that to giving some type of vehicle a boat or an airplane which of course the dollar amount you would think would go up you have the same problem in that although you can kind of look at the kelly blue book of a vehicle or a boat or something like that or an airplane they are all unique in that you have different wear and tear and maintenance that has been kept on those therefore determining the fair market value is difficult. So if you deduct more than $500 for a contribution of a motor vehicle boat or airplane you must also attach a statement from the charitable organization to your paper return the organization must use form 1098c to provide the required information if your total deduction is over $5,500 for certain contributions of clothing and household items discussed next you may also have to get appraisals of the values of the donated property. So clearly when you're looking at high dollar amount items now you have charitable deductions you've allowed charitable deductions to happen and now what are people going to try to do if you're trying to game the system they're going to try to give a lemon of a car a piece of garbage car and then overvalue it right because then you get a large deduction so there are many scams that are set up you know from a tax planning you know people doing kind of shady things on the tax preparation side with regards to charity contributions because when you get into this valuation of the thing that is being given it's easy to then try to say well I overvalued it well how do we stop people from overvaluing something like a car or a boat or an airplane we can force them to take an appraisal which is basically it's kind of like a home appraisal someone's going to come in hopefully a third party will come in and give an accurate valuation of the property even that is going to make it difficult because that means like the third party appraisal person could also be leaning towards the high end of the appraisal because they know where their bread is buttered they're trying the person who wants the appraisal wants the value to be high because they're trying to get a deduction and so that's where the issues come in so you could see form a to a three and it's come in its instructions for details if that applies to you contributions of clothing household items a deduction for these contributions will be allowed only if the items are in good used condition or better so again what does that even mean that's it's nice wordage in theory but that's hard to know in practice so however i might might my clothes are good usable even with holes like all you know all over them right it is still still good it's still good it's like albundi socks right i don't know however this rule doesn't apply to a contribution of any single item for which a deduction of more than five hundred dollars is claimed and for which you include a qualified appraisal and form eight three eight two eight three with your tax return record keeping if you gave property you should keep a receipt or written statement from the organization you gave the property to or a reliable written record that shows the organization's name and address the date and location of the gift and a description of the property this is going to be important for us because typically you might have to have that information in order to enter into the actual tax return now note what the organization cannot give you they can't give you the actual amount meaning if you gave them clothes or something like that they're not going to know the value of the clothes they're not going to want to take on that liability to try to value the clothes they're not a pawn shop they're they're going to instead give you the information saying hey this is what was given to us this is the date that it was given here's our address and so on and and that's what we're going to have when we're trying to enter this into the tax return hopefully so for each gift of property you should also keep reliable written records that include how you figure the property's value at the time you gave it so if you get audited this is good what they're going to ask you will give us evidence that property was given and then give us some kind of explanation as to how you came up with the value that you put on the tax return so if the value was determined by an appraisal keep a signed copy of the appraisal so if it was a high dollar amount item then you might have got the third party of appraisal which gives you more solid support if it's a if it's a lower dollar item and you don't need the appraisal you might not have the appraisal and you did the best you could with what you had so the cost or other basis of the property if you must reduce it by any ordinary income or capital gain that would have resulted if the property had been sold at its fair market value how you figured your deduction if you choose to reduce your deduction for gifts of capital gain property any cond any conditions attached to the gift so if the gift of property is 250 dollars or more you must also have a contemporaneous written acknowledgement from the chair to be see gifts of 250 dollars or more earlier for more information