These Goodwill tickets are just driving me up the wall.
Some of my least charitable-minded clients perk up when I ask them about charity. Of course, there are no cash contributions, but there are always a half-dozen or so tickets where they clean out the house and take bags and bags of stuff down to Salvation Army, Goodwill, whatever. These places always provide a receipt but never a value.
I did have a receipt one time with a value on it. The value ($2500) was in black ink and rest of the ticket was in blue ink, and in different handwriting. When I started asking him the questions required for over $500 he told me to just forget it.
Ask the client and the response is always "Oh this was very good stuff, almost new!! And cost us a lot of money when we bought it." If they want to deduct more than $500, and I tell them there is another form with detailed questions, they usually just quit and act crestfallen.
Taking stuff to Goodwill is a good thing, socially responsible, and helpful to many people. My clients would be better off, however, if they did away with this mishmash deduction and allowed them to deduct productive job expenses without the 2% haircut. If this happened, I still think people would take bags and bags when they did their spring cleaning.
Some of my least charitable-minded clients perk up when I ask them about charity. Of course, there are no cash contributions, but there are always a half-dozen or so tickets where they clean out the house and take bags and bags of stuff down to Salvation Army, Goodwill, whatever. These places always provide a receipt but never a value.
I did have a receipt one time with a value on it. The value ($2500) was in black ink and rest of the ticket was in blue ink, and in different handwriting. When I started asking him the questions required for over $500 he told me to just forget it.
Ask the client and the response is always "Oh this was very good stuff, almost new!! And cost us a lot of money when we bought it." If they want to deduct more than $500, and I tell them there is another form with detailed questions, they usually just quit and act crestfallen.
Taking stuff to Goodwill is a good thing, socially responsible, and helpful to many people. My clients would be better off, however, if they did away with this mishmash deduction and allowed them to deduct productive job expenses without the 2% haircut. If this happened, I still think people would take bags and bags when they did their spring cleaning.
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